The taste, smell, feel, sight, and sound of food preparation and eating evoke memories of home, childhood, relationships, and happy occasions. Such memories often sustain us when we are recovering from trauma and grief. In some post-nuclear fiction, writers have used food to give characters an opportunity to recall the past and cherish the memories of life before a nuclear war. Characters take comfort in the familiar, whether it is an overlooked candy bar in a looted grocery store or the treat of an apple in a seemingly dead world. Memories of food — the shopping and cooking routines of the past, the favorite foods, the guilty pleasures, and the notable meals — ground this speculative fiction in reality and offer writers rich metaphors for regularity, routine, and civilized action. In the ruins of society, food preferences and table manners may not seem at all important; however, the characters’ memories of how they once lived and their desire to retrieve some of that past may provide, on the fictional level, the impetus for rebuilding a community. In the characters’ relationship with food and their memories of food are the ingredients that predict the progression from scavenging to producing food and the decision to share rather than to hoard. This paper will examine how two works, Warday (Whitley Strieber & James Kunetka, 1985) and Swan Song (Robert R. McCammon, 1987), make the connections between food and memory and use them to establish a basis, albeit a fictional one, for hope and recovery after a nuclear war.
About the presenterJane Sellman
MA-English
MFA-Creative Writing and Publication Arts
Writing Consultant for nursing students at University of Maryland
Writing Consultant for undergraduate and graduate students at University of Baltimore
Adjunct Professor, Writing Program, University of Baltimore freelance writer and editor