Mothers Who Cook, Daughters Who Write: Negotiations of the Mother-Daughter Relationship in Culinary Memoir

Popular understanding of the kitchen as the hearth and heart of the home suggests that families, especially children, make fond memories around food and eating. At the center of those memories is the Ideal Mother, who provides comfort through wholesome meals. Defining the culinary mother-daughter memoir as a memoir written by the daughter reflecting on her life and relationship with her mother through an engagement with food and culinary practice, the daughter’s writing often conflates a yearning for the mother with the yearning for the mother’s cooking. Investigating the relationship between the mother-daughter relationship, food, and grieving in five culinary memoirs, the paper undertakes a self-reflexive examination of how grief and hunger can impact the daughters’ representation of her relationship with her mother. Ultimately arguing that there is no singular representation, the paper suggests that the daughter uses cooking and memoir writing to come to terms with her grief for her lost mother.