| Chapter 1: | Intellectual Appetites |
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Western history, Western politics, Western metaphysics. We must use this discourse to open the conditions of possibilities for a radical change of discourse.”11 Castillo praises La sartén por el mango, which in her view calls “for legitimation of a space traditionally associated with and denigrated as female.”12
One of the presentations in the Massachusetts conference, later included in La sartén por el mango, was “La cocina de la escritura” by Puerto Rican Rosario Ferré, in which she expresses her views about women’s writing.13
Ferré had long been interested in literary matters. She studied French and English literature at Manhattanville College. After completing an MA at the University of Puerto Rico, she studied at the University of Maryland, obtaining a PhD in literature. As a student at the University of Puerto Rico, she met Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa and Uruguayan literary critic Angel Rama, who encouraged her to pursue her literary vocation. In 1971 she co-founded the literary magazine Zona de carga y descarga, which she directed until 1975; she later solidified her reputation as a writer with the publication of her first book, Papeles de Pandora (Pandora’s Papers), a collection of poems and short stories published in Mexico in 1976. Ferré initiated her literary career when the increasing participation of women in all social spheres brought about a feminist conscience in the island, which in turn resulted in the introduction of new female literary voices. The author was part of this feminist conscience, evidenced not only in the social- and gender-oriented topics of her texts, but also in her expressive strategies, such as the irony, humor, and richness of images that characterize her work.14
Ferré makes use of kitchen tropes to explore the existence of a gender-based discourse. She creates a parallel between the act of cooking and that of writing. Like cooks, writers need to learn from the “mothers’ (literary mentors), select good ingredients