NowHere and NoWhere: There’s No Place Like Home in Beth Yahp’s Eat First, Talk Later
This chapter explores Beth Yahp’s travel memoir Eat First, Talk Later: A Memoir of Food, Family and Home (2015) to examine whether the idea of home can be transmuted into an enigmatic ideal, presumed to be located in an unreachable and impossible destination. Yahp was born in Malaysia of Chinese-Tha...
| Published in: | Home and Homeland in Asian Diaspora: Transnational Reflections in Art, Literature, and Film |
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| Format: | Book chapter |
| Language: | English |
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Springer International Publishing
2024
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| Online Access: | https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85212717904&doi=10.1007%2f978-3-031-59884-5_12&partnerID=40&md5=89b926b6722131d76df1d8bb473b60ca |
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2-s2.0-85212717904 Dalal S. NowHere and NoWhere: There’s No Place Like Home in Beth Yahp’s Eat First, Talk Later 2024 Home and Homeland in Asian Diaspora: Transnational Reflections in Art, Literature, and Film 10.1007/978-3-031-59884-5_12 https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85212717904&doi=10.1007%2f978-3-031-59884-5_12&partnerID=40&md5=89b926b6722131d76df1d8bb473b60ca This chapter explores Beth Yahp’s travel memoir Eat First, Talk Later: A Memoir of Food, Family and Home (2015) to examine whether the idea of home can be transmuted into an enigmatic ideal, presumed to be located in an unreachable and impossible destination. Yahp was born in Malaysia of Chinese-Thai-Eurasian origin and is currently based in Sydney. Her journey retraces the routes Yahp’s parents traversed around their former home in Malaysia during their honeymoon period, spent forty-five years ago. However, as her literal road trip fails to reach its destination, and her emblematic journey to find a sense of home remains inconclusive, drawing from Susan Stanford Friedman’s assertion, the chapter will ask whether the commonplace expression of “there’s no place like home” uncovers a dual connotation within diasporic predicaments. As home can be an ideal place of happiness, home can also become an unreachable utopia. Consequently, even though homes could be territorially located, as in “NowHere,” the idea of home could remain the greatest enigma of all, a trope of the unattainable, located in a mythic “NoWhere.”. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024. Springer International Publishing English Book chapter |
| author |
Dalal S. |
| spellingShingle |
Dalal S. NowHere and NoWhere: There’s No Place Like Home in Beth Yahp’s Eat First, Talk Later |
| author_facet |
Dalal S. |
| author_sort |
Dalal S. |
| title |
NowHere and NoWhere: There’s No Place Like Home in Beth Yahp’s Eat First, Talk Later |
| title_short |
NowHere and NoWhere: There’s No Place Like Home in Beth Yahp’s Eat First, Talk Later |
| title_full |
NowHere and NoWhere: There’s No Place Like Home in Beth Yahp’s Eat First, Talk Later |
| title_fullStr |
NowHere and NoWhere: There’s No Place Like Home in Beth Yahp’s Eat First, Talk Later |
| title_full_unstemmed |
NowHere and NoWhere: There’s No Place Like Home in Beth Yahp’s Eat First, Talk Later |
| title_sort |
NowHere and NoWhere: There’s No Place Like Home in Beth Yahp’s Eat First, Talk Later |
| publishDate |
2024 |
| container_title |
Home and Homeland in Asian Diaspora: Transnational Reflections in Art, Literature, and Film |
| container_volume |
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| container_issue |
|
| doi_str_mv |
10.1007/978-3-031-59884-5_12 |
| url |
https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85212717904&doi=10.1007%2f978-3-031-59884-5_12&partnerID=40&md5=89b926b6722131d76df1d8bb473b60ca |
| description |
This chapter explores Beth Yahp’s travel memoir Eat First, Talk Later: A Memoir of Food, Family and Home (2015) to examine whether the idea of home can be transmuted into an enigmatic ideal, presumed to be located in an unreachable and impossible destination. Yahp was born in Malaysia of Chinese-Thai-Eurasian origin and is currently based in Sydney. Her journey retraces the routes Yahp’s parents traversed around their former home in Malaysia during their honeymoon period, spent forty-five years ago. However, as her literal road trip fails to reach its destination, and her emblematic journey to find a sense of home remains inconclusive, drawing from Susan Stanford Friedman’s assertion, the chapter will ask whether the commonplace expression of “there’s no place like home” uncovers a dual connotation within diasporic predicaments. As home can be an ideal place of happiness, home can also become an unreachable utopia. Consequently, even though homes could be territorially located, as in “NowHere,” the idea of home could remain the greatest enigma of all, a trope of the unattainable, located in a mythic “NoWhere.”. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024. |
| publisher |
Springer International Publishing |
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| language |
English |
| format |
Book chapter |
| accesstype |
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scopus |
| collection |
Scopus |
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1820775436571901952 |