Chicken Soup is Kinda Gross

There’s a Chinese proverb that says as humans, food is our ‘everything’. Judging from the amount of time and energy I spend planning for my next meal and poring over menus, I wholeheartedly agree. Food is and will always be a huge chunk of our identity; but just as how identity is fluid, our relationship with food changes with time.

Growing up, my mum always insisted on making chicken soup for me. The really strong kind of black chicken soup steeped with herbs for hours and cooked over a low fire overnight.

It was truly painstaking to make, and I detested it.

People say that black chicken meat is sweeter and tastes more exotic. Well, if exotic equates to questionable, then they’re absolutely right. The herby taste of the soup was just too much for me to stomach. Unfortunately, under Mum’s domestic dictatorship, ‘no’ has never been an answer, so I plugged my nose and chugged the bitter stuff wordlessly.

Fast forward 18 years - I was thrilled to leave home for university and finally escape the omnipresent chicken soup. I would never miss it, not in a million years.

And I didn’t!

For the first two months, I spent my time shuttling between the ice cream and snack aisles in Tesco and stuffing myself silly with Wotsits. Life was good, that lame ol’ herbal soup could take a hike.

But by the time winter rolled around, I found myself thinking about chicken soup rather obsessively. What’s happening to me, I thought, I used to hate that soup with a passion.

Maybe it was because temperatures had dropped to single digits so eating ice cream meant hypothermia, or maybe it was because I was homesick, but a steaming bowl of chicken soup with extra herbs sounded like the best thing ever.

It was then that I realised that while the soup really did taste icky, it represented Mum’s love and care for me and that’s what I missed. Drinking gallons of chicken soup since I was three had ingrained a few drops of it into my identity. I didn’t know it back then but a tiny portion of my heart had been taken up by the soup I once hated. Home meant chicken soup and chicken soup meant home; although younger me would have been disgusted by this realisation.

Now, when my mum hands a bowl of soup to me, I pick up my spoon and drink it gratefully. I’m thankful that it’s a part of me and I’ll definitely miss it when I leave home.

But still, chicken soup is kinda gross.

Words by: Emun Yeat Design by: Isabel Brewster

Due to the unfortunate events that have been ongoing in Afghanistan over the previous weeks, the topic of immigration has generated a significant amount of coverage and discussion. Over recent years it has become increasingly common to see countries take tougher action against immigration, which then is often followed by a lot of negativity surrounding immigration in the media. While millions over the world, including myself, are coming together to share empathy and to support those who are in need in Afghanistan, the news continues in a stream of horrifying scenes, reminding us to keep those suffering close to heart.

In Jane Eyre, the character of Bertha is from Spanish Town in Jamaica, where she is married off blindly to Edward Rochester solely for her wealth and looks. Readers of the novel will know that it becomes increasingly clear that Rochester’s extreme ill-treatment of his wife certainly leads (or contributes) to her mental deterioration. Rochester’s character is definitely a product of British society, especially regarding their views on those who came from countries further afield. Bertha is often described in an animalistic and violent manner, as is shown in Chapter 25, where Jane describes Bertha to Rochester after claiming to have seen a ghost in her room. Problematically, Jane says that “it was a discoloured face—it was a savage face. I wish I could forget the roll of the red eyes and the fearful blackened inflation of the lineaments!”, where she expresses her fear of Bertha based on the colour of her skin by using the terms ‘discoloured’ and ‘savage’. This then suggests that Bertha’s appearance isn’t considered as being natural, further emphasising the fact that she isn’t a part and was never welcomed into British society. ‘Savage’ was also previously a common racist term used to describe those who weren’t white as unwelcoming and uninhabitable, as though they were wild animals. Jane, having grown up in a dominantly white society would have taken to the same views as Rochester, which is why she is comfortable enough to address it to him. Descriptions of Bertha’s appearance are painfully similar throughout the rest of the novel, further highlighting Britain’s racist history.

While many readers don’t see Rochester at fault when it comes to his totally failed marriage, I certainly do. At a time where society where mental health wasn’t treated the way it is today, Bertha was the epitome of what British society rejected and dismissed. Rochester even says so himself that he was ‘allured’ by how exotic she was, indicating that there was more curiosity than there ever was love. Similarly, the prequel to Brontë’s literary masterpiece, A Wide Sargasso Sea, written in 1966 by Jean Rhys tackles similar themes. In the highly acclaimed prequel, we follow Bertha and her unfortunate life before and after her marriage to Rochester. Rhys’ novel gives readers more of a truthful account of how the immigrants would have been treated by the English. The book proposes that Rochester was also going into his marriage blindly, something which readers can use to empathise with him as a character, but must also remember to question whether that justifies his actions- of course, it doesn’t. One painstakingly obvious act of racism in Wide Sargasso Sea is that readers are able to pick up on the control that Rochester feels that he has over Bertha when he anglicises her Creole name of Antoinette Cosway without her consent. By obliging to follow her husband back to the country of England, she’s forced to give up her freedom, her culture, and her identity, which is sadly what hundreds and thousands of people are still forced into doing.

Both books, Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea deal with a distressing case of immigration in a narrow-minded 19th-century society, where the lack of acceptance leads ultimately to Bertha’s downfall. While immigration isn’t the primary theme in either book, I find that it is often overlooked and put second to the love story between Jane and Rochester. Both books are known as classics in the realm of English literature, which further highlights that immigration and the negativity surrounding it is not a modern trope. Despite this, today I’ve read many interesting novels which discuss immigration, such as Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and The Ungrateful Refugee by Dina Nayeri that show immigrants in a positive light. More often than not I find that these novels are inspiring, coming-of-age texts and is very common today in YA and feminist novels. The shift in attitudes in the literary community supports a much more modern and understanding mindset, which is why modern literary fiction is just as important to read as the classics, in which we are able to recognise outdated approaches towards topics like immigration.

Words by: Shivika Singh Design by: Rahima Bhatti