The Ironies of Religious Cooking

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    The most shocking part of Pérez's account of cooking for the deities in the Yoruba religion for me was the ironies involved, especially in the constituents' positive attitudes towards servitude. As this community has experienced the abuse of slavery in its history and undoubtedly still feels the effects of this injustice today, this positive attitude confused me. In fact, laborers ensured that their "masters" could eat, turning the most bland and boring ingredients into something actually palatable, yet their masters have completely whitewashed them and depicted them as lacking culture. Talk about the irony in that! 

    When Pérez details the rites of passage that initiates had to take, doing the dirty work of gutting animals, it becomes apparent that this custom–almost like the act of hazing–is actually viewed in a positive light in the ilé. Completing these undesirable trials is recognized as an act of becoming part of the larger community. Equally interesting, as so much time in the ilé is dedicated towards cooking meals in a social setting, it is ironic that most of this food is not consumed. The purpose of cooking for rituals is simply to satisfy the appetites of the gods, so after it is presented as an offering, it usually gets destroyed or simply rots. As someone who, once again, has had little to no experience with religion or religious offerings, my immediate reaction was: can't they just have a little?? They put in all that work.. But I guess that just goes to show that someone outside the religious sphere just can't comprehend the spirituality behind cooking for the gods.

    And lastly, although kitchens are largely feminized in our culture and nation, it was a little surprising to hear that the role of cooking in the Yoruba religion is also cast to women as well as gay men. For some reason I was expecting a community who largely values social communication and close-knit bonds to be less enforcing of gender roles. I suppose this demonstrates the widespread feminization of cooking and homosexuality that occurs no matter what community you are interacting with. How can we defeminize these practices to make religion more inclusive in a day and age where this phenomena is so widespread?

Comments

  1. Jonathan Brumberg-KrausMarch 9, 2022 at 1:55 PM

    Good observations, especially about the ironies of emphasizing servitude, but don't read in too much about how little food seems to be actually consumed, or the feminization of cooking at this particular Lucumi ilé. Ashabi contrasts the more gendered role of cooks among Cuban Lucumi practitioners to the cooking in her ilé. I get the sense that a lot of the food is consumed.

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