The Pen and the Pan: Food, Fiction and the Homegrown Caribbean Feminism(s) by Robyn Cope

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Pen and the Pan: Food, Fiction and the Homegrown Caribbean Feminism(s) by Robyn Cope Viviana Pezzullo Cope, Robyn. The Pen and the Pan: Food, Fiction and the Homegrown Caribbean Feminism(s). U of the West Indies P, 2021. Pp 277. ISBN 978-9-766408-60-2. $45 (paper). The Pen and the Pan by Robyn Cope is a compelling comparative reading revolving around the role that food plays in Caribbean society through the fiction of Gisèle Pineau, Edwidge Danticat, Lakshmi Persaud, Shani Mootoo, and Maryse Condé. Cope's analysis focuses both on the Francophone and Anglophone Caribbean and provides a cross section of the cultural value of food imagery as a means to discover identity and renegotiate gender dynamics. The importance of food is grounded in colonial and neocolonial appetite (reminiscent of the sugar plantations) that confines women to a state of marginality. For this reason, to the paternal conteur, Cope counterposes the maternal grandmother, whose kitchen talk becomes the center of a new narrative aiming to shed light on women's oppression and "homegrown" feminist responses—a term that Danticat coins to describe how women in her family embraced feminism as a form of resistance in their everyday lives. [End Page 184] In Chapter 1, food evokes the French Antillean diaspora (1960-1980) through Gisèle Pineau's fiction. Culinary memories recall the importance of roots; in Un papillon dans la cité, Man Ya packs Félicie's suitcase with yams and sweet potatoes when she leaves to go to France. However, in addition to a way of maintaining a connection with the native land, food is also the remedy to the sense of displacement that Negropolitan women feel in their attempt to assimilate, offering the chance to discover Metropolitan France through culinary traditions. The same correlation between food and immigration that Pineau lays out occurs in the work of Edwidge Danticat, which Cope analyzes in Chapter 2. Here, culinary imagery assumes a revolutionary charge denouncing violence, terror, and autocratic regimes, proving how the ghosts of Rafael Trujillo and François "Papa Doc" Duvalier still haunt the Dominican Republic and Haiti up to today. According to Danticat, the sugarcane trope exemplifies the transgenerational trauma of the violence perpetrated against Caribbean women living in a society so inherently tied to the plantation system. In this context, food becomes a form of resilience and a way to fight against silence. Chapter 3 focuses on Lakshmi Persaud's exploration of Indo-Trinidadian identity dealing with the difficult reconciliation of Afro-Caribbean food traditions with Hindu Indian cultural preservation. In Sastra, for instance, Persaud's description of the dishes served at a Hindu wedding reveals how changes in traditional ways of cooking reflect an evolution of values and morals, reinforcing the parallelism between food and religion. Cope continues to investigate Indo-Trinidadian culture in Chapter 4 through Shani Mootoo who informs about gender oppression. Through discussing issues of homosexuality and non-binary gender discrimination, Mootoo denounces the homophobia of post-colonial Commonwealth Caribbean states, like Trinidad and Tobago, which in 2000 passed the Sexual Offences Act outlawing homosexuality. Domination is also expressed through cultural appropriation which greatly connects to food, as the protagonist of "The Upside-downness of the World as It Unfolds" experiences with her white friends, who try to force Indian food upon her. In the last chapter, Cope discusses the work of Maryse Condé, according to whom writing has very much in common with cooking, both being acts of pleasure. Nevertheless, cooking also implies for Condé self-sacrifice and resilience. Like Condé's grandmother Victoire in Victoire, les saveurs et les mots, many women in the Caribbean did not have access to education and therefore, entrusted their memories to the kitchen, the space where they gathered and shared knowledge. Acknowledging their culinary labor means granting a voice to silenced women. For that purpose, Cope underscores already in the title of the volume how for writers like Condé, the main point of contact between cuisine and literature is how both permit a deeper understanding of the world. Cope's study gives much food for thought, using culinary imagery to provide an intersectional reading of the historical...