There is no such thing as an ‘authentic’ curry – though everyone knows what curry tastes like, the defining characteristics of the Indian subcontinent’s biggest cultural export are slippery at best. The term covers a vast array of dishes, and so lends itself naturally to metaphor. In this provocative essay, Naben Ruthnum interrogates the weight of that metaphor. Beginning on the plate, where curry is a beguiling and vexing gastronomical entity, Ruthnum detours through the bookshelf, honing in on what he calls curryboooks – trope-ridden memoirs and novels of the South Asian diaspora, written for both brown readers and Western publishing markets. In analyzing Patak’s jarred kormas and Jhumpa Lahiri’s novels, Ruthnum argues persuasively to unburden not only curry but brownness itself from what Salman Rushdie once called an ‘imaginary homeland.’ It’s time, curry demonstrates, for food marketers, chefs, and writers to shed expectations rooted in a turmeric-tinged nostalgia. With a dash of memoir, a heaping spoon of literary analysis, and a good glug of cultural criticism, Ruthnum’s deep dive into how curry has become a faulty culinary synecdoche for brownness is positively delectable.
