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Chapter 17 - Food, Hunger, and Irish Identity

Self-Starvation in Colum McCann’s “Hunger Strike”

from Part III - Applications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 June 2018

By
Miriam O’Kane Mara
Edited by
Gitanjali G. Shahani
Gitanjali G. Shahani
Affiliation:
San Francisco State University
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Summary

This chapter investigates how Colum McCann’s representation of self-starvation in “Hunger Strike” expands representations of anorexia nervosa, emphasizing the political nature of all self-starvation. The novella presents a child protagonist, who uses food behaviors to negotiate changing relationships with his body, his family, and his nation as he haltingly moves toward maturity. Mara argues that the historical traces of Famine joins the religious residue of the Catholic Eucharist and the sectarian political significance of food refusal deepening the ways that food interpolates Irish culture. By highlighting the connections between language and food in identity building, the analysis reflects the complexity of McCann’s characters’ communication through food related signifiers.
Type
Chapter
Information
Food and Literature , pp. 319 - 334
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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References

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Mara, Miriam O’Kane. “The Geography of Body: Borders in Edna O’Brien’s Down by the River and Colum McCann’s ‘Sisters.’” In The Current Debate about the Irish Literary Canon: Essays Reassessing The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, edited by Thompson, Helen. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2006.Google Scholar
McCann, Colum. “Hunger Strike.” In Everything in this Country Must. New York: Picador, 2000.Google Scholar

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