Reading Food as Conflict: Gastrocriticism in Indonesian and English Literary Corpora

Abstract

The dining table is often imagined as a place of intimacy, where families share stories and preserve traditions through dishes passed down across generations. Yet behind this warmth, food also becomes an arena of conflict: taste confers social recognition, culinary heritage acquires competing values, and familiar dishes awaken memories of loss. This study offers a gastrocritical reading of Dee Lestari’s Filosofi Kopi, Madre, and Aroma Karsa; alongside Donia Bijan’s The Last Days of Cafe Leila and Kim Fay’s Love and Saffron. A qualitative comparative approach traces the relationship between gastronomic elements, plot, characterization, and space; while attending to the narrative voices and focalization through which culinary experiences are mediated. Across Lestari’s works, coffee becomes a measure of expertise that can unsettle personal worth, a bread starter brings commercial interest into tension with the responsibility to care for inherited practices, and aromatic preparations connect sensory knowledge with control over the body. In Bijan’s and Fay’s novels, family dishes and exchanges of recipes bring characters face to face with estrangement, grief, and the need to rebuild emotional connections. These orientations overlap. Memory and affection also shape conflict in Lestari’s works, just political pressures inform the struggle to sustain culinary traditions in Cafe Leila. Narrative voice and focalization make these conflict tangibles through bodily labor, recollection, and correspondence. Food thus becomes an arena where tension is provoked and negotiated, revealing how everyday culinary practices shape struggles over authority, the care of inherited traditions, and the possibility of belonging amid ongoing social change.