PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewAdeptly translated ... In much the same way that her fiction has acted as a form of resistance to what she sees as the limitations of postcolonial literature, Condé’s cooking initially emerged as an act of defiance against the fussy strictness of her mother, who asserted that \'only stupid people like to cook\' ... Her food writing can also be seen as a rebellion against the tropes attached to that genre ... Neither does Condé bathe food in the romantic light that renders it a clichéd symbol of nostalgia or exoticism. In fact, she avoids romanticization almost entirely...she can be unforgivingly critical ... Condé has theorized about what she terms \'literary cannibalism,\' and in the kitchen she practices what might be called \'culinary cannibalism.\' These metaphorical acts allow both Condé’s writing and her food to transcend national or cultural delineation ... presents an alternative to the standard culinary memoir, committing an even greater \'crime of treason\' than that of comparing writing to cooking: She asserts food writing’s rightful place among the literary arts. Both the genre and its readers are all the richer for it.
