Food, Hunger, and Irish Identity: Self-Starvation in Colum McCann’s “Hunger Strike”

This chapter investigates how Colum McCann’s representation of self-starvation in “Hunger Strike” expands representations of anorexia nervosa, emphasizing the political nature of all self-starvation. The novella presents a child protagonist, who uses food behaviors to negotiate changing relationships with his body, his family, and his nation as he haltingly moves toward maturity. Mara argues that the historical traces of Famine joins the religious residue of the Catholic Eucharist and the sectarian political significance of food refusal deepening the ways that food interpolates Irish culture. By highlighting the connections between language and food in identity building, the analysis reflects the complexity of McCann’s characters’ communication through food related signifiers.