Goosing Christmas
Astute readers will quickly seize upon the “Miriam” of the title as a clue to the prevalence of Jewish heritage, culture, and history within the book. The narrator being Jewish is not particularly steeped in the concept of Christmas goose as a dinner idea. She frames the relationship of Jewish people during the holiday season in a sexualized metaphor that is particularly apt, all things considered:
“I was nervous and excited: I was a Christmas virgin.”
What Doesn’t Taste Like Chicken?
Familiar with the stand-by response to trying any new kind of meat never tasted before? No matter how exotic or unusual the source—from alligator sticks to yak-in-a-sak (provided there is such a thing), some joker is always just waiting to quip that it tastes like chicken. Not so much here:
“At one of the student cafeterias I ate rabbit, lapin, for the first time. I thought it was chicken until I tasted it. I instantly knew what it was. It tasted like a long-eared, large-toothed rodent, and the drumstick was not a chicken bone.”
A Food Metaphor for Everything
As one might expect from a book with the world kitchen in the title, food metaphors run rampant. It takes a special kind of talent to wring from baker offerings a metaphorical image for being an "outsider”
“No one wanted to be my boyfriend in Detroit. In Detroit, I was a misfit, an onion roll amongst cupcakes. In Brooklyn, I was among my own kind, yet almost a cupcake myself.”
Because It’s Mostly Seafood, See
The author often makes sure to choose just the right metaphor to fit the imagery. If you are talking about a display of food from the ocean, you don’t compare it to a mountain, after all:
“Platters of smoke salmon, sable, whitefish, tomatoes…Tender herrings, displays of cheese. The colors fanned out on the blue tablecloth like a shimmering coral reef.”
The Ritual Bath of Female Purity
It’s not just food the reader will learn about while traversing through the kitchen of Miriam. There is a lot really insightful information on those Jewish rituals that to the non-Jewish world can seem very strange and alien. Turns out this is a perspective not limited to non-Jewish people:
“`Female impurity’ resounds harshly on the modern ear. It sounds like a primitive blood taboo: fear of women and their cycles. It sounds as if men abhor a woman’s blood.”
