Food in Tropic of Orange

Food has come up multiple times in our course's curriculum as a signifier of race. In Tropic of Orange, sushi arises as central to social commentary in the chapter, Hiro's Sushi. What I noticed is the way the novel draws attention to the sushi not as a positive indicator of race, but as something more negative -- as something that culture is reduced to rather than celebrated by. In Emi and Gabriel's discussions in the restaurant, they discuss hating "multicultural diversity," not for what it is, but for the construct that it has be come. "It's a white guy wearing a Nirvana T-Shirt and dreads. That's cultural diversity," Emi says (128). This is placed in contrast with the (white) woman sitting next to them, who with a "patronizing" smile, tries to cheer them  up by talking about the deliciousness of the tea, to which  Emi reacts: "See what I mean, Hiro? You're invisible. I'm invisible. We're all invisible. It's just tea, ginger, raw fish, and a credit card." Stereotypes and food have come to replace the actual people they are derived from. Rather than serve as an access point to other cultures, food just replaces it; it is taken to represent the entire culture, and all of its people. This point is made even more clear as the woman says, "I love living in L.A. because I can find anything in the world to eat, right here," in expressing her love for multiculturalism (128). The novel's opinion of what multiculturalism has become is apparent in the woman's words, which the reader is supposed to take ironically. She calls LA "A true celebration of an international world. It just makes me sick to hear people speak so cynically about something so positive and to make assumptions about people based on their color" (128). In reality, this woman exudes the exact type of ignorance she is trying to condemn. The scenes in the sushi restaurant play into the greater motive of the novel of calling the reader's attention to the way that  the West has grown to be just an amalgamation of people locked into a space that doesn't have much room for them. In the scene, Gabriel orders a California roll, which is viewed as "ammo" for Emi, of course, because it is indicative of Americanization and the imposition of Americanism on other cultures (128).