As a Chinese saying goes, “To the ruler, the people are heaven; to the people, food is heaven.” Food integrates in every aspect of life in China. Not only is food a necessity that keeps us alive, it is also a bond that holds a family and society together. Thus, through his food memoir, Diamond Grill, Fred Wah centers food as the focal point to help him reveal his family’s and community’s experience of being Chinese-Canadian. Diamond Grill is a biotext (a combination of fiction and autobiography) that surrounds the stories in the restaurant called Diamond Grill started by Wah’s grandpa in Nelson, BC in 1951. In his book, Wah uses the trope of food literally and metaphorically with abundant food descriptions and recipes to explore familial history, ethnic identity, and the experiences of immigration community.

Food in Diamond Grill embodies Wah and his community’s mixed identity. Wah foregrounds food as a crucial element that connects his diverse ethnical origins and his hyphenated identity as a Chinese-Canadian. Many dishes served in Diamond Grill are “mutated” (Wah 2) and mixed by chefs in Diamon Grill or in other Chinese restaurants. They have changed the ingredients, the way of cooking and the name of dishes. These dishes and Wah share the same characteristic—impurity. The signature course in Diamond Grill, mixed grill, also known as “mixee grill” to Wah’s family, is a case in point. Shu, the chef who cooked the mixee grill , and other Chinese chefs replaced the traditional ingredient of “lamp chop, split lab kidney, and pork sausage” to “veal chop, a rib-eye, a couple of pork sausage, bacon”. They also abandoned the original cooking method of grilling and modified it to frying, so they can suit Chinese “quick and dirty” taste (2). By describing the literal processes of adding, subtracting, and adjusting the way of eating and cooking, Wah is materializing his transcultural identity. Food functions as “empowering trope for Wah, as it enacts the multiplicity of his origins and identifications and their process of amalgamation.” (Baena 109). While the dishes transform and travel between cultures, Wah and his community also experienced cultural and identity shift. They have a mixed racial background and have to live on hyphen. Besides, the fact that mixed grill is described as superior and authentic, while mixee grill is improvised, is similar to the how people see pure race as powerful and mixed race as marginalized. The tension between positive and negative views on mixed/mixed grill thus manifest the Wah and his coummunity’s struggle to accept the hyphenated identity and the challenges that follow.

Food also bring out the theme of “faking it” in Diamond Grill. “Faking it” is to present yourself as something that you are not, in the hope of fitting in, by performing in a different way. When Wah illustrates how Shu “compose” mixee grill, lots of dramatic verbs that are rarely found in recipes are used, such as “nudges”, “shovels”, “throws”, “lift”(2). The whole process is portrayed more like a performance than simply cooking. On the other hand, Wah make use of straightforward and unembellished verbs like “stir-fry” (44), “peel” (67), “rinse”(129), and “season”(140) to describe the cooking procedures of pure Chinese cuisines, for example tomato beef, lo bok, chow mein, and deep-fried lingcod. The contrast in word choice signifies what Wah said, “when you’re not ‘pure’ you just make it up.” Just as Shu “acted” all the way when cooking a mixed dish, Wah has to play his role of hyphen to disguise his mixed background. In this way, faking it is the power to resist the traditional paradigm for purity. It enables Wah’s family to cross the boundary of different races through passing—a process of adopting another racial identity (in Wah’s case the identity of White) in order to gain acceptance from that culture (Dawson 2).

In addition to identity formation and resistance to purity, food serves as a bridge connecting the past to the present. Food is more than a pleasure nourishment; it is a by-product of social relationship that entails collective history. As stated by Waxman, “food is clearly a link among generations of immigrants and exiles” (363) as food has a “pacifying effect” (Baena 114). When immigrants cook and eat the food from their home country, they re-connect to their origin. The sense of familiarity and comfort from food eases their anxiety of leaving home. Similarly, Wah’s grandpa always seems to think of China when he eats wet rice, that “taste remembers life” back in China (74). Food enables Wah and his family to associate with their history, reinforce their identity of being a Chinese despite living abroad, and foster their sense of belonging towards China. As stated by Wah, “for years after leaving home I’ve had a craving for some Chinese food taste that I haven’t been able to pin down” (67). Food is thus important in enacting cultural memory.

Food in Diamond Grill takes up multiple functions in both literal and metaphorical sense. The mixed nature of the dishes in the restaurant epitomize multicultural background of Wah’s family and community. Food is also linked to memory, as taste reminds people, especially immigrants like Wah, the and experiences and culture of home country.

    Works Cited

Baena, Rosalía. “Gastro-Graphy: Food as Metaphor in Fred Wah’s            Diamond Grill and Austin Clarke’s Pig Tails’n Breadfruit.” Canadian Ethnic Studies. 38.1 (2006): 105-16. ProQuest. Web. 21 Jan. 2016.

Dawson, Carrie. “The Importance of Being Ethnic and the Value of Faking It.”Postcolonial text.4.2 (2008):1-10. Directory of Open Access Journals. Web. 21 Jan. 2016.

Wah, Fred. Diamond Grill. Edmonton : NeWest, 2006. Print

Waxman, Barbara Frey. “Food Memoirs: What They Are, Why They Are Popular, and Why They Belong in the Literature Classroom”. College English 70.4 (2008): 363–383. JSTOR. Web. 23 Jan. 2016.