The Language of Baklava

Introduction

The Language of Baklava, published in 2005, is a memoir-cookbook by Arab American author Diana Abu-Jaber. Born in Syracuse, New York, to a Jordanian immigrant father and an American mother of Irish and German descent, Abu-Jaber grew up between the two countries and cultures, and her memoir recounts her struggles to find her place between them.

This guide references the 2006 Anchor Books edition of The Language of Baklava.

Content Warning: The source material contains references to racism, anti-gay bias, the Holocaust, and suicide; it also quotes people using outdated terms for Roma and Asian people.

Plot Summary

The book relates Diana’s life from childhood and to early adulthood. The coming-of-age memoir details with humor and affection how Diana’s personality forms against the background of the contrasting influences in her life. Diana places food at the center of her life, and thus each chapter of her story contains at least one recipe that relates to the events and emotions she recalls.

The memoir begins when Diana is six and living in America. Her father (“Bud”) is a Jordanian immigrant, and her mother is of German and Irish descent; Diana physically resembles her mother, which sometimes causes confusion for both her and others. Diana, her parents, and her sisters (Monica and Suzanne) spend a lot of time with Bud’s extended family (several of his brothers emigrated as well), and these gatherings typically center around food; Diana recalls watching and helping her father make shish kabobs before a family picnic, as well as a dinner during which Diana’s uncles botched the slaughtering of a lamb.

Diana begins attending a Catholic school, but when she is seven, her father returns to Jordan to scope out his prospects there; he is tired of the menial jobs he has been working in America and hopes to one day own a restaurant. The family relocates to Jordan, where Diana quickly settles in, learning to speak Arabic and befriending the neighborhood children. On one occasion, the family visits Bud’s Bedouin relatives, and Diana almost wishes she could stay with them forever. However, after a roughly a year in Jordan, the family returns to Syracuse, New York.

Diana misses Jordan, and the family’s new neighbors are sometimes intolerant, judging them for picnicking in view of the street. However, returning to the US enables Diana to spend more time with her maternal grandmother, Gram, who takes her to a Chinese restaurant that further cements her love of food. The family nearly returns to Jordan when Diana is 12, but by this point she feels settled into life as an American and does not want to uproot herself. They do, however, move to a house in the countryside near Euclid, New York; the isolation upsets Diana, who at one point tries to run away from home.

The family continues to visit frequently with Diana’s uncles, aunts, and cousins, but as Diana enters adolescence, her relationship with Bud—and her Arab heritage—becomes strained. She chafes against her father’s expectations regarding her behavior—he at one point becomes angry that a boy tries to visit her at home—and she wants to fit in at school. When Diana’s aunt Aya visits from Jordan, it temporarily smooths things over, and Aya shows her niece how food and cooking can mend relationships and heal wounds. However, Diana remains frustrated with her situation, and since she is also bored at school, her guidance counselor ultimately suggests she begin college early. Her father agrees, provided she stay in an all-girls dorm. Diana continues to rebel against her father while at college, to the point that when she returns home to visit, his cooking makes her physically sick for a time.

After finishing college, Diana struggles to settle into one job or role. She marries briefly, attends a graduate program in creative writing, and teaches. In her thirties, she returns to Jordan on a Fulbright Scholarship; she has mixed feelings about going but feels she needs to reconnect with her roots. Once there, she is the center of her extended family’s attention; many of the relatives who had emigrated have since returned to Jordan, and her apartment becomes a gathering place for big, boisterous parties. Bud visits her while she is in Jordan and goes with her on an excursion to their family’s ancestral home in the desert. One of Bud’s brothers nearly cons him into paying an extortionate price for some property—Bud still hopes to open a restaurant—but Aya intervenes, and Bud returns to the US.

Diana follows a few months later but once again finds herself adrift between places and cultures. However, she ultimately comes to accept that she will never feel fully settled in one place—helped, in part, by a new relationship with a man who respects her Jordanian heritage. Meanwhile, Bud finally opens his longed-for restaurant, albeit one that serves American rather than Middle Eastern food. Though he himself retires in a few years, he is content to pass the restaurant on to his daughter Monica, at last feeling at home in the US now that Monica and Suzanne have had children, making him a grandfather.