Niko Aragon
Mr. Alarashi
ENG2D3-22
April 24, 2023
How Yasaman’s Love Made Her Learn to Cook
Why does cooking bring us together? In Sara Fartizan’s Why I Learned to Cook? we explore the life of Yasaman. A teenage girl who now has a cute, popular girlfriend that would love to meet Yasaman’s beloved grandmother. Yasaman finds herself asking her grandmother for cooking lessons so she can make her girlfriend, Hannah, something special. With the unintended coming out as bisexual to her grandmother and creating a bond with her that they’ll cherish for life, this book truly does answer the question as to why cooking brings us together. Yasaman’s first step in learning how to cook is because her girlfriend, Hannah, “just [wants] to eat some homemade
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However, she knows that there’s an ulterior motive behind this. After her granddaughter receives a text and “[turns] the colour of a pomegranate” (p 92) she knows that there’s a special someone Yasaman is learning to cook for. Yasaman is scared to tell her grandmother the truth because she loves both her grandmother and Hannah and does not want to lose either of them. Since Yasaman’s grandmother is Persian, the LGBTQ+ community is not widely accepted outside of Northern America. Eventually, Yasaman learns enough recipes and works up the courage to invite Hannah over for dinner at her grandmother’s house. They plan to present themselves as friends however Yasaman’s grandmother knows something is about. After asking Hannah if she knows why her granddaughter spontaneously asked to learn to cook, Yasaman caves. She tells her grandmother right there at the dinner table that she and Hannah are together. Her grandmother shares a short story in Farsi, a Persian language, with Yasaman that brings her to tears. It is about how Yasaman’s grandmother learned how to cook for her grandfather and how “he always lied and said everything [she] made was delicious when [they] both knew it wasn’t” (p 99). Since this story was told in Farsi Hannah is none the wiser, and when she sees Yasaman start to tear up she becomes frightened. The fear that gathered in