Post #26: Sara Suleri and her betrayal of trust through food

 Word Count: 339

Sara Suleri was a writer from Pakistan. She was raised in Karachi in Pakistan. He father was a journalist, and her mother was a teacher. Coming from a Pakistan/Welsh background she grew up and eventually moved to England for a brief amount of time. Later in her life she moved to Connecticut where she is a professor at Yale University teaching English.

Suleri goes through experiences of “meatless days” beginning with her conflicts with her family based on the food she was eating. She was told the the kapura’s she was eating were “sweetbreads”. These sweetbreads were something commonplace around her and she did not think much of it until some people started mentioning what went into the food. She wrestled with this for quite some time. Her friend Tillat told her “They’re testicles, that’s what kapura really are" (731). Still, she refused to believe it. When this was revealed to her, she was shocked but also felt betrayed. After all, the one who had originally defined what kapura was her mother. Suleri began to that contemplate anxiously the predicament in which she was now caught in. On one side, she had to face this fact and also wonder what else her mother lied to her about. Perhaps she’s been eating unconventional foods this whole time and didn’t know? Despite the food she ate, her mom told her what her what she was eating on purpose. Perhaps this was done because her mother knew how she would feel about the foods they eat in Pakistani culture. She learned the disgust many had with their food and how many were forced to live with that reality. The betrayal she faced with food, was not something uncommon and through her writing we get to understand more of who Sara is. She was not satisfied with not knowing enough and pursued knowledge and stuck out when others forced her in. She was retrospective in the way she would look back in her live and evaluate her past with her current contextual knowledge.