Can Stories About Food Upend Familiar Narratives of War?
When it comes to conflict, culinary traditions and cultural passions are considered lighter fare—often ignored in coverage of war and the communities it displaces. But journalists ANNIA CIEZADLO and DALIA MORTADA use food as an entry point for their reporting on the violent upheavals of the Middle East and the people they affect. Ciezadlo moved to the region in 2003 and covered wars in Beirut and Baghdad. Her memoir, Day of Honey: A Memoir of Food, Love, and War, raises the kind of civilian concerns that are “almost always erased” in conventional narratives about the Middle East. Mortada, an American journalist of Syrian heritage, uses her connection to the culture to tell stories through the lens of cooking. As the Syrian refugee diaspora has grown in recent years, she has focused on “documenting the Syrian kitchen
