Journal Facts

Journal
Auto/Biography
ISSN
0967-5507
Volume
12
Issue
2

Article Facts

Title
My Cypriot Cookbook: Re-imagining My Ethnicity
DOI
10.1191/0967550704ab009oa
Author
Maria Antoniou (University of Brighton, UK, ma8 at brighton.ac.uk)
Pages
126-146

Article Links

My Cypriot Cookbook: Re-imagining My Ethnicity

Maria Antoniou (University of Brighton, UK, ma8 at brighton.ac.uk)

DOI: 10.1191/0967550704ab009oa

Abstract

This article is written in the form of a cookbook. It contains recipes for four Cypriot dishes, along with my taped and then transcribed commentaries on preparing them. I locate food making and eating as auto/biographical practices and, particularly, as methods for examining personal and social identities. I use the cookbook to explore my Cypriot ethnicity and to understand the problematic ways it interacts with my lesbian sexuality. At the start of the article, I discuss how, until now, I have marginalised my Cypriotness in order to claim a lesbian identity. But whilst cooking Cypriot food, I begin to re-imagine my ethnicity and to re-story myself as both Cypriot and lesbian. Throughout the article, I explore memories, reflect upon my relationship to racial and ethnic categories, and examine personal geographies and notions of `home'.

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