Relocating Multicultural Identities through Cuisine: Analysing Elif Shafak’s The Bastard of Istanbul

Abstract

Elif Shafak’s The Bastard of Istanbul (2007) is an attempt to voice the persisting trauma caused by the Armenian genocide in the early 1900s. Turks and Armenians are still unable to forgive and forget. Shafak advances the need to remember the past if one has to embrace the future. In the select novel common grounds of interaction are initiated through food and cuisine. Food-laced narratives intertwine the past and the present with ease and open common grounds for reconciliation. Shafak establishes that Turkish values, culture and history come full circle only through Armenian interference. The catastrophe might have displaced the Armenians, but they are not “placeless.” Shafak emphasises that there is space for all in Turkey. As Alan Robert points out in In Justice’s Shadow: “Intercultural dialogue is the best guarantee of a more peaceful, just and sustainable world”. Shafak appropriates Turkish food and culinary activities as a symbolic language that addresses the issues of identity and acceptance. The family drama that unfolds through food affiliations reflects the psychological discords experienced by genocide victims and their future generations. The novel presents Asya Kazanci and Armanoush Tchakhmakhchian, two teenagers separated and bound together by a catastrophe that struck their families three or four generations ago. Employing food as a platform for critical communications, Shafak initiates effective and long-lasting remedies through literature.