The flavours of mixing: Postcolonial literary representations of cooking as a feminine mode of creolization

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the place of food and cooking in Caribbean women’s postcolonial writings, and concentrates on the works of two women authors of Caribbean origins: Jean Rhys and Olive Senior. It explores how the representations of cooking and culinary traditions help us to rethink the process of creolization from a feminine perspective. Creolization is a process of cultural encounter and mixing that is central to the understanding of Caribbean identities. However, the theories of creolization have often omitted the role that women play in this process. This article focuses on cooking, an activity usually conceived as feminine and shows how it participates in the opposition to the continuation of racial, social, and sexual domination resulting from colonization. It demonstrates how the two selected authors tackle the topic of cooking, and how they rehabilitate this activity as an art and as a key element in the transmission of creolized cultures.