Sweetening Death
“Sweetening Death” presents a comparative analysis of the role of sugar and its transformation in funeral foods, remembrance rituals, documenting the ways the dead are perceived and understood as active or passive actors in their afterlives. Sugar, though widely available in the contemporary world, was initially utilized in memorialization and funereal practices because it connoted a particular status to the dead, though it is now ironically a staple of the lower classes and a symbol of malnutrition. The comparison in food bereavement and memorialization rituals highlights a distinct difference between the function of food on the American table in comparison to the Mexican or Chinese context, revealing that while food functions to largely aide the bereaved and reintegrate the grieving into their social network without the deceased in the American context, it literally functions to feed the dead in Mexico and China.