Bryan Washington, following the publication of his book “Family Meal,” went on the audio interview with the magazine TASTE’s interview series, “This Is TASTE,” where he spoke to the host Eliza Bornstein about his novel. “Family Meal” is particularly interesting as a novel due to its focus on care as shown through the nourishing of one’s own body and the bodies of their loved ones.

https://youtu.be/X2_5cTd3YSM?si=-P6j4Cp1gsS9IdRk

Food in Washington’s novel takes on several importances: food as a method to communicate care, food as a means of pleasure and exploring pleasure, food as a measure of authenticity in oneself and to connect oneself to their culture, food as symbolism of memory, or food as a means to memorialize things.

Washington speaks on how food and places of food can signify something but also help as narrative devices for other conversations as well. The example he uses is a bakery, the positive, warm associations bakeries have by their nature of being a bakery, and a bakery can create space for more primary conversations on identity and pleasure—Washington uses food and the meal as a method of communicating the exploration of pleasure for the protagonists in the narrative. Care is shown, in Washington’s work, in the patterns to which a motherly figure may feed or provide nutrients for JT ( one of the protagonists in the narrative) prior to his leaving her home. 

Washington also reflects that with a gay bar, a place that also signifies pleasure, but for whom? Gay bars, as Washington states, are often places where Black and Brown people or Trans and Non-binary people can be excluded and therefore be barred from accessing said pleasure:

“…the gay bar also does a very similar thing in that way, yeah yeah the yeah the gay bar does a similar thing like at this question of like uh how queer spaces serve as points of pleasure or can serve as points of pleasure and like for who specifically are these locals opening themselves up to as sources of pleasure raid like our marginalized folks folks of color are they having access to the same amounts or the same kinds of pleasure in these spaces are trans or like non-binary folks like are they privy to the same amount of pleasure or the same access points of pleasure in these spaces.”

Washington, in this interview, as with his story “Gatekeeping” (check out my post on Bryan Washington’s Gatekeeping), has a focus on place. His usage of food, and the pleasure attached to it, is couched in a conversation on cultural, multicultural identity. Both place and the meal in his writer’s worldview are core truths for his characters.