The Edible I in Kim Fu’s For Today I Am a Boy
Abstract
This article explores Kim Fu’s 2014 For Today I Am a Boy through the lens of critical eating studies. In this novel’s portrayal of Peter (see note 3), the trans woman protagonist, images of food and acts of eating (or the denial of these acts) are deployed as a meditation on the navigation of body, hence of self. This paper positions the act of eating as representing more than just a physical, biological process, but rather a placing of people in relationship with the edible matter and all the conditions of its production, including its socio-cultural/familial meanings. In interpreting Peter’s experiences of self in continuum with the experiences of both Peter’s mother and Mrs. Becker (the mistress of Peter’s father), this paper observes characters figured not only as hungry, but also as edible due in part to their battered subject positions but even more so due to the forced repression and denial of these identities.
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Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Duke UP, 2010.
Beushausen, Wiebke, et al. “The Caribbean (on the) Dining Table: Contextualizing Culinary Cultures.” Caribbean Food Cultures: Culinary Practices and Consumption in the Caribbean and its Diasporas, edited by Wiebke Beushausen, et al., Transcript Verlag, 2014, pp. 11–24.
Cho, Lily. “Visibility and Captivation in Kim Fu’s For Today I Am a Boy.” University of Toronto Quarterly, vol. 89, no. 1, Winter 2020, pp. 71–87, https://doi.org/10.3138/utq.89.1.05. Accessed 19 Jan. 2022.
Curtin, Deane W. “Food/Body/Person.” Cooking, Eating, Thinking: Transformative Philosophies of Food, edited by Deane W. Curtin and Lisa M. Heldke, Indiana UP, 1992, pp. 3–22.
Fisher, M.F.K. How to Cook a Wolf. 1942. The Art of Eating, MacMillan, 1954, pp. 185–350.
Fu, Kim. For Today I Am a Boy. HarperCollins, 2014.
Guarracino, Serena. “An Effortless Voice: Queer Vocality and Transgender Identity in Kim Fu’s For Today I Am a Boy.” Queering Masculinities in Language and Culture, edited by Paul Baker and Giuseppe Balirano, Palgrave MacMillan, 2018, pp. 127–47.
Horvat, Ana. “‘Trans is Hot Right Now’: On Cisgender Writers and Trans Characters in Jeanette Winterson’s Frankissstein and Kim Fu’s For Today I Am a Boy.” Gender Forum, no. 79, 2021, pp. 79–96, https://genderforum.org/. Accessed 22 Sept. 2023.
Hsu, Stephanie. “Trans Feminism, Asian America’s Queer Exception?” Asian American Literature in Transition, 1996–2020, edited by Betsy Huang and Victor Román Mendoza, Cambridge UP, 2021, pp. 133–49, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108914109.008. Accessed 2 July 2023.
Kilgour, Maggie. From Communion to Cannibalism: An Anatomy of Metaphors of Incorporation. Princeton UP, 1990.
Mannur, Anita. Culinary Fictions: Food in South Asian Diasporic Culture. Temple UP, 2010.
Mintz, Sidney. Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom. Beacon Press, 1996.
Plett, Casey. “Rise of the Gender Novel.” The Walrus, April 2015, https://thewalrus.ca/rise-of-the-gender-novel/. Accessed 18 June 2018.
Roy, Parama. Alimentary Tracts: Appetites, Aversions, and the Postcolonial. Duke UP, 2010.
Ruthven, Andrea. “Subverting Transnormativity: Rage and Resilience in Kim Fu’s For Today I Am a Boy.” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, vol. 21, no. 1, 2019, https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.3369. Accessed 19 Jan. 2022.
Seid, Danielle. “Third Chinese Daughter.” Amerasia Journal, vol. 42, no. 2, 2016, pp. 139–60, https://doi.org/10.17953/aj.42.2.139. Accessed 2 July 2023.
Tompkins, Kyla Wazana. Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in the 19th Century. New York UP, 2012.
Beushausen, Wiebke, et al. “The Caribbean (on the) Dining Table: Contextualizing Culinary Cultures.” Caribbean Food Cultures: Culinary Practices and Consumption in the Caribbean and its Diasporas, edited by Wiebke Beushausen, et al., Transcript Verlag, 2014, pp. 11–24.
Cho, Lily. “Visibility and Captivation in Kim Fu’s For Today I Am a Boy.” University of Toronto Quarterly, vol. 89, no. 1, Winter 2020, pp. 71–87, https://doi.org/10.3138/utq.89.1.05. Accessed 19 Jan. 2022.
Curtin, Deane W. “Food/Body/Person.” Cooking, Eating, Thinking: Transformative Philosophies of Food, edited by Deane W. Curtin and Lisa M. Heldke, Indiana UP, 1992, pp. 3–22.
Fisher, M.F.K. How to Cook a Wolf. 1942. The Art of Eating, MacMillan, 1954, pp. 185–350.
Fu, Kim. For Today I Am a Boy. HarperCollins, 2014.
Guarracino, Serena. “An Effortless Voice: Queer Vocality and Transgender Identity in Kim Fu’s For Today I Am a Boy.” Queering Masculinities in Language and Culture, edited by Paul Baker and Giuseppe Balirano, Palgrave MacMillan, 2018, pp. 127–47.
Horvat, Ana. “‘Trans is Hot Right Now’: On Cisgender Writers and Trans Characters in Jeanette Winterson’s Frankissstein and Kim Fu’s For Today I Am a Boy.” Gender Forum, no. 79, 2021, pp. 79–96, https://genderforum.org/. Accessed 22 Sept. 2023.
Hsu, Stephanie. “Trans Feminism, Asian America’s Queer Exception?” Asian American Literature in Transition, 1996–2020, edited by Betsy Huang and Victor Román Mendoza, Cambridge UP, 2021, pp. 133–49, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108914109.008. Accessed 2 July 2023.
Kilgour, Maggie. From Communion to Cannibalism: An Anatomy of Metaphors of Incorporation. Princeton UP, 1990.
Mannur, Anita. Culinary Fictions: Food in South Asian Diasporic Culture. Temple UP, 2010.
Mintz, Sidney. Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom. Beacon Press, 1996.
Plett, Casey. “Rise of the Gender Novel.” The Walrus, April 2015, https://thewalrus.ca/rise-of-the-gender-novel/. Accessed 18 June 2018.
Roy, Parama. Alimentary Tracts: Appetites, Aversions, and the Postcolonial. Duke UP, 2010.
Ruthven, Andrea. “Subverting Transnormativity: Rage and Resilience in Kim Fu’s For Today I Am a Boy.” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, vol. 21, no. 1, 2019, https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.3369. Accessed 19 Jan. 2022.
Seid, Danielle. “Third Chinese Daughter.” Amerasia Journal, vol. 42, no. 2, 2016, pp. 139–60, https://doi.org/10.17953/aj.42.2.139. Accessed 2 July 2023.
Tompkins, Kyla Wazana. Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in the 19th Century. New York UP, 2012.
Austen, V. (2025). The Edible I in Kim Fu’s For Today I Am a Boy. Canada and Beyond: A Journal of Canadian Literary and Cultural Studies, 14, 145–161. https://doi.org/10.14201/cand.v14i145-161
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