Vol. 77 No. 3/4 – Summer/Fall, 2018

Edible Men: Playing with Food at Bachelorette Parties

Diane Tye

ABSTRACT: This paper explores the bachelorette party as a postfeminist expression. By focusing on food and drink consumed at bachelorette parties held in Atlantic Canada over a twenty-year period, it considers both the symbolic construction and consumption of male bodies in the form of meatballs or phallic cake, and the conjuring of girlhood through the ironic reinterpretations of candy associated with childhood. It examines how food and drink served at bachelorette parties fit into the hypersexualized and transgressive play that characterizes these events. KEYWORDS: Bachelorette party, feminism, foodways, play

Not Just for Laughs: Parody Recipes in Four Community Cookbooks

Jennifer Rachel Dutch

ABSTRACT: Community cookbooks are serious business when sold to raise funds for charity. Yet community cookbooks are also venues ripe for humor. Drawing on the notion of “folk parody, ”this article examines two types of “parody recipes ”found in four community cookbooks that are part of the author’s personal collection: “joke ”recipes as “humorous ”folk parody and “lesson ”recipes as “serious ”folk parody. In so doing, the article reveals how folk humor in community cookbooks can serve as a powerful tool for communicating identity within and outside the community that creates them. KEYWORDS: parody recipe, folk humor, community cookbook, foodways.

From the Ethnic to the Public: The Emergence of Chinese New Year Celebrations in Newfoundland as Vernacular Cultural Heritage

Mu Li

ABSTRACT: Chinese New Year was brought with Chinese immigrants to Newfoundland upon their first arrival in 1895. During the Chinese restriction era, the celebrations were only observed in private ethnic space. As multiculturalism has been more recognized, celebrating Chinese New Year gradually has become a public cultural event, practiced within and beyond the diasporic outskirts. This paper attempts to describe and interpret the process of how a diasporic culture emerges as a shared local tradition and creates a new sense of belonging in response to official multiculturalism. KEYWORDS: Chinese diaspora, festival studies, ethnic folklore, Chinese New Year, multiculturalism

Tasting the Forbidden Fruit as Rite of Passage: Former Mormons Reflect on Their First Sips of Alcohol and Coffee

Raven Haymond

ABSTRACT: For people transitioning from obedient membership in the LDS Church to lives outside of the Church, first experiences consuming alcohol and coffee are critical and intentional rites of passage. Narratives of these experiences reflect what they believed when they were members of the LDS Church, how they think members of the Church will react to their choices, and personal negotiations of morality and authority. KEYWORDS: religious studies, rites of passage, religious identity, personal narrative, foodways.