- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF
About this book
At once a traveler's tale, a memoir, and a mouthwatering cookbook, Biting through the Skin offers a first-generation immigrant's perspective on growing up in America's heartland. Author Nina Mukerjee Furstenau's parents brought her from Bengal in northern India to the small town of Pittsburg, Kansas, in 1964, decades before you could find long-grain rice or plain yogurt in American grocery stores. Embracing American culture, the Mukerjee family ate hamburgers and softserve ice cream, took a visiting guru out on the lake in their motorboat, and joined the Shriners. Her parents transferred the cultural, spiritual, and family values they had brought with them to their children only behind the closed doors of their home, through the rituals of cooking, serving, and eating Bengali food and making a proper cup of tea.
As a girl and a young woman, Nina traveled to her ancestral India as well as to college and to Peace Corps service in Tunisia. Through her journeys and her marriage to an American man whose grandparents hailed from Germany and Sweden, she learned that her family was not alone in being a small pocket of culture sheltered from the larger world. Biting through the Skin shows how we maintain our differences as well as how we come together through what and how we cook and eat. In mourning the partial loss of her heritage, the author finds that, ultimately, heritage always finds other ways of coming to meet us. In effect, it can be reduced to a 4 x 6-inch recipe card, something that can fit into a shirt pocket. It's on just such tiny details of life that belonging rests.
In this book, the author shares her shirt-pocket recipes and a great deal more, inviting readers to join her on her journey toward herself and toward a vital sense of food as culture and the mortar of community.
Frequently asked questions
Yes, you can cancel anytime from the Subscription tab in your account settings on the Perlego website. Your subscription will stay active until the end of your current billing period. Learn how to cancel your subscription.
No, books cannot be downloaded as external files, such as PDFs, for use outside of Perlego. However, you can download books within the Perlego app for offline reading on mobile or tablet. Learn more here.
Perlego offers two plans: Essential and Complete
- Essential is ideal for learners and professionals who enjoy exploring a wide range of subjects. Access the Essential Library with 800,000+ trusted titles and best-sellers across business, personal growth, and the humanities. Includes unlimited reading time and Standard Read Aloud voice.
- Complete: Perfect for advanced learners and researchers needing full, unrestricted access. Unlock 1.4M+ books across hundreds of subjects, including academic and specialized titles. The Complete Plan also includes advanced features like Premium Read Aloud and Research Assistant.
We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month. With over 1 million books across 1000+ topics, we’ve got you covered! Learn more here.
Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. You can pause it, speed it up and slow it down. Learn more here.
Yes! You can use the Perlego app on both iOS or Android devices to read anytime, anywhere — even offline. Perfect for commutes or when you’re on the go.
Please note we cannot support devices running on iOS 13 and Android 7 or earlier. Learn more about using the app.
Please note we cannot support devices running on iOS 13 and Android 7 or earlier. Learn more about using the app.
Yes, you can access Biting through the Skin by Nina Mukerjee Furstenau in PDF and/or ePUB format. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
Publisher
University Of Iowa PressYear
2013Print ISBN
9781609381851eBook ISBN
9781609382087Table of contents
- Contents
- Author’s Note
- Prologue
- 1. Transformation
- 2. Two Brides
- 3. Little India
- 4. Journey
- 5. Table Grace
- 6. Small Things Satisfied
- 7. Indian Breads
- 8. Grand Lake Menu for a Guru
- 9. An Indian Kitchen in Kansas
- 10. Attic Fans and Flying Typewriters
- 11. Mother Tongue
- 12. On the Road with Amiya and Rani
- 13. All Our Tupperware Is Stained with Turmeric
- 14. Strength of a Nation
- 15. Street Foods
- 16. Six Recipe Cards, a Wingand a Prayer, Circa 1984
- 17. Bishshwayya
- 18. A (Not So) Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Didu’s House
- 19. Pop Culture India
- Acknowledgments
- Recipe Index