*The present anthology comprises 14 creative non-fiction essays on the topic of food by professional hyphen-canadian writers. The authors behind this anthology have studied their own hungers, to paraphrase American food writer M.F.K. Fisher. Their vivid re-telling of past culinary experiences bears little resemblance to the—now more than ever—sanitized version of the food court. It becomes a collective exercise of remembering and creating new memories as your eyes settle on the words Masgouf, asado, Injera, or ajiaco. Both food and speech are experienced in the mouth, as Peter Midgley’s piece on his family connection to Afrikaans cuisine and Adriana Oniţă’s testimony of learning to make maternal Romanian dishes attest. What makes these essays relevant is their Canadianness, and I am not referring to an immutable, sterile notion of national identity. Many Canadians speak and write in a second, and sometimes third language, as do some of the contributors. Compiling this anthology satiates our hunger to open up the field of CanLit.
