THE PALATE OF PAIN: EXPLORING FOOD AS A SENSORY MANIFESTATION OF INTERGENERATIONAL TRAUMA.

Abstract

‘The particular sadness of a lemon cake’ by Aimee Bender is a novel that depicts the themes of food, memory and trauma to portray how sensory experiences represent and transmit intergenerational suffering. The study employs a qualitative approach within the framework of trauma theory to analyze the transmission of psychic wounds through food culture. The current study investigates various characteristics of intergenerational trauma in the chosen work. The study intends to show how the trauma is passed on from one generation to another in the name of food culture. Furthermore, the importance of this study rests in the fact that the role of woman in passing the generational trauma through care giving and unconscious transmitters of trauma. The analysis tries to discover how each character in The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake struggles in their own unique way, symbolizing the pain of persons in the real world in the aftermath of World Wars especially in the perspective of food. Through this text, Bender tried to portray intergenerational trauma encoded in sensory experience revealing pain even within the ordinary act of eating.