What Is Eating Latin American Women Writers: Food, Weight, and Ea ...

seemingly succumbing to the patriarchal values she so despises. Conversely, she rebels when she “solemnly declare[s]” that she has never been “in this garlic that you share” (8). She thus distances herself from the form in order to criticize the cookbook and its constraints because she does not wish to conform to its implications nor does she consider herself a culinary “fairy.”

The protagonist openly challenges the author of the cookbook and she advocates for women’s appropriation (and re-creation) of language. She advises cookbook authors that their time would be better spent writing “serious” texts, such as dictionaries or prolegomenons. In the same vein, she criticizes the title of the menu, “Don Quixote’s Dinner,” asserting that Don Quixote was never known for his gastronomic abilities. Castellanos therefore repudiates the legacy that the male controlled pen continues to exert over women’s literary voices even at the ordinary level of the cookbook. At the same time, she clearly makes a distinction between high and low cultures. The protagonist displays the cultural sophistication of Castellanos’ own writings, which are in stark contrast to the cookbook’s lack thereof.⁶ It is not surprising that from that moment on, she ignores the cookbook’s instructions, which in her view do not deserve her respect.

Olfactory memory related to food also plays an important role in the progression of the plot. Like the infusion of lime blossom tea and madeleines that brings to mind the Sunday scenes in Combray with Aunt Léonie in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, the food that metamorphosizes before the protagonist’s very eyes acts as a stimulus to evoke past events in her life. For instance, the package of rare cooked meat that reminds her of the “orgiastic sun-bathed love making” (9) on her honeymoon, suggests women’s oppression exercised through their bodies. The protagonist and her husband were painfully sunburned, but because her husband assumed the top position, his back was not touching the sand.