Preview

dumas sweet

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
318 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
dumas sweet
“Sweet, Sour, and Resentful” In this story, Dumas tells Gourmet magazine how her mother prepares a Persian feast weekly for a great number of people. She tells how her mother is bitter about cooking every week for so many people and in a small place.
The family had moved to the states before their friends and family, so they were called on to help adapt when they moved to the area. That’s when the weekly meals started. Dumas stated, “Displaying the hospitality that Iranians so cherish, my father extended a dinner invitation to everyone who called”(321). “As a result, we found ourselves feeding dozens of people every weekend”(Dumas 321). Her mom intended dinner starting on Monday for the next weekend. Since she didn’t drive, her husband took her shopping every Tuesday for all the provisions she needed for the dinner. Availability and freshness of food and herbs determined how long the shopping trip would be. She, along with help from her husband, prepared items such as herbs and onions, all week in order to be ready for her big meal on the weekend.
Even though the mother prepared many dishes to serve a lot people, she prepared only the best. Mother appeared to be resentful to be constantly cooking; she didn’t do any less from week to week. All in all it appeared that she thrived on the compliments and wishes she received for her efforts. She covertly prided herself in being able to continue the traditions of the Iranians culture and her neighbors. She was really is proud of her achievements. This is signified by the time and effort that she spent shopping, preparing, and sharing her food. The mother gave up her time and energy to uphold the culture she loved.

Work Cited
“Sweet, Sour, and Resentful,” by Dumas, The Bedford Reader Eleventh Edition. Kennedy, X.J. et.al Boston: Bedford/St. Martin, 2012.



Cited: “Sweet, Sour, and Resentful,” by Dumas, The Bedford Reader Eleventh Edition. Kennedy, X.J. et.al Boston: Bedford/St. Martin, 2012.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    At times, the essay makes the reader laugh and feel concern for her struggles. Dumas tries to earn our sympathy by describing the situation of her family’s difficult names. To avoid setting an over serious tone, she attempts to reflect her humorous perspective through laughable quotes such as, “She Whose Name Almost Incites Riots” (page 751). This wise introduction lets the audience know that the essay will be an enjoyable one to read with plenty of humorous lines and content. This use of pathos makes the reader learn the message of the essay without even noticing it. Another classic example of her making the audience feel sympathy is when she said people used to think her brother’s name (Neggar) sounded like a derogatory name for African Americans. The strategy of making the audience feel sorry for the author let’s them feel as if they are somehow connected to what she is saying. They feel the urge to know what happens next and their curiosity becomes stronger with each step of her life. Because readers can become tired of hearing “sob” stories, she decides to blend in the humor throughout the main portion of the…

    • 1109 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Additionally, both authors discuss food in a manner that acts as a springboard to analyzing food’s cross-cultural dimensions. Rice is, admittedly, a basic food in the Eastern world. However, “Rice Culture” tell us how Dash and Aunt Gertie cook rice American style. “Before cooking, Aunt Gertie would wash her…

    • 1249 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    [9] Sean M. O’Brien, In Bitterness and In Tears (Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002), 29.…

    • 5055 Words
    • 21 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Funny in Farsi

    • 755 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Dumas’ developmental niche is apparent throughout her memoir. The psychology of her caretakers, her parents, is shown in one light when Dumas tells about her summer camp experience. Her father was cheap yet generous at the same time. He came from a hard childhood, having his parents pass away at an early age so he instilled hard work and the value of money in his children. He felt that spending $500 for two weeks at camp was expensive but it must have meant the camp was beyond exceptional. On the other hand, when he took her shopping for supplies, the clearance isle was his target for the bare necessities, nothing frivolous allowed. Throughout her life she took note and spoke on his penny-pinching schemes, but also on his charities and generosities to those less fortunate than him.…

    • 755 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Similar to In Cold Blood, this novel tackles a real-life tragedy in brutally exquisite, personal detail. Urrea’s chapter-long description of the tortuous process in which the living men’s bodies bake, wither, and decompose in the desert heat still haunts me to this day. As a reader, I’m enraptured by his characterization of all parties involved as living, breathing, flawed, greedy, humorous, wicked, and selfless people. While it often becomes a difficult space to navigate, I feel truly at home in this swath between the complexity of real life and the beauty of prose in which authors like Capote and Urrea weave their…

    • 674 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Holden Caulfield Controversy

    • 2569 Words
    • 11 Pages

    Mosaic 15.1 (Winter 1982): 129-140. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 138. Detroit: Gale Group, 2001. Literature Resource Center.…

    • 2569 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Updike, John. “A&P”. In The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009. 560-564. Print.…

    • 694 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Lee was a public relations executive and Bob had just been named co-anchor of ABC’s World News Tonight. Then, while Bob was embedded with the military in Iraq, an improvised explosive device went off near the tank he was riding in. He and his cameraman, Doug Vogt, were hit, and Bob suffered a traumatic brain injury that nearly killed him.…

    • 1554 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Franklin, John Hope. "The Train from Hate." James, Missy and Alan P. Merickel. Reading Literature and Writing Argument, 4th Edition. Longman, 2011. 211.…

    • 1017 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    Iran Hostage Crisis

    • 1993 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Although she had lived alongside her family in America for years, her life was thrown into discord after a group of insurgent student in Iran took over the American embassy and held those inside hostage. As soon as America became aware of the news, life for Iranians in America became far more difficult. Due to the crisis, her father was fired from his job and unable to find a new one and her mother had to lie about being Turkish in order to protect herself and her family from the rampant hatred towards Iranians. The actions of people thousands of miles away radically changed her life; people’s connection of the author’s family with the radical groups in Iran was unfair because they also believed that the events of the hostage crisis were equally terrifying and wrong, yet they were still ostracized for something they couldn’t help: their…

    • 1993 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Racial Mountain

    • 882 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Cited: Baym, Nina. The Norton Anthology of American Literature.: Package 2 : 1865 to the Present. London: W W Norton &, 2007. Print.…

    • 882 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In a Praise of Food

    • 816 Words
    • 4 Pages

    In “In a praise of Fast Food,” Laudan reports the disaster of modern, fast and process foods. Laudan states that at least, it is the message by newspapers, magazines and in cookbooks. Lauden explained her own experience on culinary art where according to the article her culinary style, like so many people was created by those who scorned industrialized food or culinary Luddites.…

    • 816 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Franklin, John Hope. “Train from Hate.” Reading Literature and Writing Argument 5th ed. Eds. Missy James and Alan P. Merickel. Boston: Pearson, 2013. 223-24. Print.…

    • 1147 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    He is preparing the food with so much care, perfection and love that it will give you an impression it is the same as raising a child. One thing I noticed in this scene, “Martin Naranjo” always follow the actual procedure to make a certain dish. He does not try new things; he doesn’t like experimenting with food. He likes to follow the same steps he learnt. Although, this looks a little strange to me because, he is a great chef, he can cook so many things and, chefs are like artists who always want to try new things. Except that there are some foods in every society which have symbolic and spiritual values according to the religious occasions which we can also see in “Meal as Metaphor”. “Since in every human society at least some food is prepared by cultural methods, a system must exist, he states, for deciding which foods to prepare in what ways.”(Farb 103). There is another reason, why Martin doesn’t like to experiment with the food because, after the death of his wife he lost the senses of smell and taste which are really important for the chef because, if a chef cannot smell the food, he will not be able know that how the food will taste and smell if he makes any changes in the recipe. Moreover, not only with the food but also with the other things, for example: Whenever their daughter speaks Spanish and English at the same time so, he always asks…

    • 1047 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Gender Trouble Analysis

    • 617 Words
    • 3 Pages

    2) Halberstam, Judith. “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Men, Women, and Masculinity.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2001. 2635-53. Print.…

    • 617 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics