{"title":"One Could Not Have Survived Communism Without a Grandmother","authors":"Irina Mihalache","doi":"10.5130/pjmis.v19i1-2.8829","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/pjmis.v19i1-2.8829","url":null,"abstract":"This reflection centers on the author’s grandmother’s cookbook as a catalyst for interrogating the incomplete memories of growing up in Romania in the 1980s during the ‘golden decade’ of Communism. During these times, oppressive policies restricted people’s access to food and punished those who tried to eat outside the scope of the regime. Yet, through my grandmother’s cooking of dishes such as sauteed stinging nettles, which is the focus of this reflection, my memories of that decade are of delicious, tasty, and nutritious meals, the best she ever ate. The reflection asks difficult questions around pleasure during oppressive times, as well as about the impossibility of recreating such a dish outside of its own history.","PeriodicalId":516654,"journal":{"name":"PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies","volume":"141 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140505061","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Le vieux jacaranda / The old jacaranda tree / Jacaranda, pohon tua!","authors":"Ian Campbell","doi":"10.5130/pjmis.v19i1-2.8896","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/pjmis.v19i1-2.8896","url":null,"abstract":"The three language versions of Ian Campbell's poem series about the old jacaranda tree in a university coutryard presented here comprise a poem series in which he first wrote a poem in French in 1989, then an Indonesian language version which was published in the literary pages of an Indonesian newspaper (in Bandung, West Java) in 2004, and finally in English. Campbell regards this whole process as emblematic of his explorations in trilingual poetics, namely what does a 'concept'/poem idea look like if done in three of the languages with which he has some degree of written knowledge or fluency: English, French and Indonesian. This mirrors the three-pronged approach he took in an earlier edition of PORTAL - Vol. 14, No 1, April 2017, where the three language versions he wrote on a single theme were in English, Spanish, and Indonesian.","PeriodicalId":516654,"journal":{"name":"PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies","volume":"21 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140505457","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Sandakan Childhood","authors":"Cecilia Leong-Salobir","doi":"10.5130/pjmis.v19i1-2.8877","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5130/pjmis.v19i1-2.8877","url":null,"abstract":"This narrative is on recalling foods enjoyed in my childhood in Sandakan, a town in the Malaysian state of Sabah on Borneo island. It is more stream of consciousness than reflective, more descriptive than analytical. In recollecting my memories of foods eaten in years gone I realise it is not an exercise in isolation. When we consume food it is not merely for sustenance as our food practises are invariably intertwined with a whole lot of experiences, rituals and habits of old. The act of remembering favourite or comfort foods can set off triggers of feelings and emotions long past. My family, like most Chinese families of the time, express their love for each other through food. It is through food that I acknowledge the caring family environment that our parents created for us.","PeriodicalId":516654,"journal":{"name":"PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies","volume":"18 1-2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-01-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140505511","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}