Some descriptions just seem off and tend to give another picture instead of the actual intention. However, some of the descriptions didn’t sit right with me. Some stories just tend to go overboard in showing symbolism and moral lessons that just tend to be overwhelming.

I also like how this story wasn’t ‘in-your-face-philosophical” type of narrative. The way she describes the ‘taste of the food’ makes me ‘feel hungry’ to know about other cultures and how these people experience them. Her writing style is delicate and imaginative. I can’t help but look back at how it was written from time to time. It’s a beautiful representation of how ‘show and tell’ works. I like this story for its admirable writing style. It explores the relationship of an artist and the society. Sometimes it examines the artist’s society to better understand the author’s literary works other times, it may examine the representation of such societal elements within the literature itself. The best literary approach for this story is Sociological Criticism. It examines literature in the cultural, economic and political context in which it is written or received. It’s a bite-sized story you can easily read without having to sit through an hour trying to figure out what’s the meaning of a certain object that wasn’t meant to have meaning at all. It’s a wholesome story that I ever read about sharing one’s culture. They shared a dish to one another in order to give someone a taste of what their culture is like. To keep the story short, this is a story of 5 different people who came from different countries. Most of the modern Philippine literature published today has influences from world literature but it mainly focuses on our own culture, unlike this story, it promotes several cultures. The theme of this book, multiculturism, isn’t far from what Philippine literature can offer. People were sheltered to only know a certain culture which is their own and now we can appreciate everyone’s culture by taking the time and effort to get to know this specific culture from another country. It takes months for a message in this country to reach the other one. We were all divided before globalization has started. I feel the need to say that she may have written this story in order to give a lesson and showcase how multiculturism has changed society over the years. When her story describes places, you can feel that you have visited that spot before and so on. When her story describes food, you can feel your taste buds tingle in delight. She pulls you in with her paragraphs that’s easy to imagine and feel. She’s able to create stories that make you feel like you’re in the story itself. I admire Merlinda Bobis for creating beautiful imagery in her prose. She has performed some of her works as theatre, dance, and music.

Her plays have been produced/performed on stage and radio in Australia, the Philippines, Spain, USA, Canada, Singapore, France, China, Thailand, and the Slovak Republic. She has published novels, short stories, dramas, and poems. As a child, her main interest was painting, but at age ten she began writing poetry because ‘painting with words’ was cheaper. Very much! Merlinda Bobis, an Australian-Filipino writerĪward-winning writer Merlinda Bobis grew up in Albay, the Philippines at the foot of an active volcano, which figures prominently in her writing and performance.

I am genuinely happy that this story is a different case! This is a parable that I appreciate so much. My cup of tea! Finally! I initially thought this was going to be the same story as the other stories in the textbook, the usual literary selections that happen to be in the book even though they don’t really make sense.

Bookwright reviews