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sereneThe Taste of Home and Country (Judith Ortiz Cofer's The Latin Deli)
Judith Ortiz Cofer's The Latin Deli explores culture and belonging in every poem, story, and essay. In these pieces, Cofer weaves threads of family, gender, race, and body image together into stories and poems, both factual and fictionalized, in an insular community of Puerto Rican migrants in Paterson, New Jersey. Another thread in the story of belonging among the residents of El Building is food: the food of Puerto Rico and the gift of love inherent in feeding one's family and community. Two of the pieces in the collection tell parallel tales of food and family: the opening poem, "The Latin Deli: An Ars Poetica," and the short story "Corazó's Café." In them, Cofer uses food and its aromas as metaphors for childhood, home, and cultural belonging.
Though the two pieces were written about two different real-life places, one in Paterson and one in Georgia ("Birthwrite"), the parallels are many, and the proprietors may as well be the same woman. The woman in "The Latin Deli: An Ars Poetica" is called "The Patroness of Exiles" (3); in "Corazó's Café," the ó(literally "heart") of the title runs the store along with her husband, Manuel, who has just died when the piece begins. The Patroness of Exiles knows that the foods she offers, "canned memories" (3), are sensory links to the homes that the migrants have left behind:
...she smiles understanding,
when they walk down the narrow aisles of her store
reading the labels of packages aloud, as if
they were the names of lost lovers: Suspiros,
Merengues, the stale candy of everyone's childhood. (3)
Suspiros (literally "sighs") and merengues are baked meringues, overly sweet children's food. The people in the Latin deli are recovering childhood by remembering these candies; so are Corazó's customers, as they shop for "assorted candies from several South American countries with curious names like Suspirosand Merengues" (94). The Patroness of Exiles exudes "maternal interest" (3) as her patrons become her children in a symbolic fashion; similarly, people in Corazó's Café her as "a plump mother to everyone" (111), and they "[depend] on her and Manuel to provide them with a taste of home.... Manuel was never happier than when he was planning the food to celebrate life and never more beautiful in Corazón's eyes than when he comforted the grieving widow or orphan with food prepared with all the care and love he had to give" (112). Ironically, Corazón herself doesn't have a mother to call to memory, nor does she have a child of her own, yet she is the mother figure for a whole community of people whose almost spiritual need for certain foods is satisfied in her shop.
Where there is food, there are love and family. Conversely, food is barely mentioned in the descriptions of the time that Corazón lives, motherless, in the house run by her elder sister, where their drunken father is alternately absent and abusive. For a short while, Corazón has a mother substitute in Manuel's mother, DoñSerena, and food comes back into the story. After Corazón's first night in Manuel's bed, DoñSerena gives her a dress to wear and sets the table for three for "a delicious breakfast of homemade bread and guava jelly" while they plan Corazón and Manuel's wedding (101). Corazón feels "sense of peace sitting in that sunny kitchen with these two people she would now call her family.... It was as if she had a mother again to take care of her" (102).
It is not only the nuclear family whose importance is underscored by Cofer's reliance on food images in these stories. Equally important in the stories and poems is a sense of cultural belonging, of connection to place in the geopolitical sense. The Suspiros and Merengues don't just connect people to their individual childhoods; they tie them to a particular food in a particular place and time, to their shared history in Puerto Rico. The Patroness of Exiles provides one such food to her customers, her metaphorical children:
...plain ham and cheese
that would cost less at the A&P, but it would not satisfy
the hunger of the fragile old man lost in the folds
of his winter coat, who brings her lists of items
that he reads to her like poetry, or the others,
whose needs she must divine, conjuring up products
from places that now exist only in their hearts‒
closed ports she must trade with. (4)
These "closed ports" signify the sad reality that not only can't the residents of El Building go back to Puerto Rico‒whether because of finances, age, or even their own deaths‒but the Puerto Rico of their childhoods doesn't even exist any more.
While their home country is not available to the people in the neighborhood, the foods they remember, and the aromas of those foods, are. When Corazón and her late husband found the spot for the store, formerly an Italian deli, "Manuel claimed that he could still smell in the wood the spices that had been sold there. It had 'corazon y alma,' he claimed, making a pun with her name, 'heart and soul'" (111). Similarly, he had told her that "simply from the lingering smells [in El Building], he could tell her what each family in each apartment had had for dinner that evening and whether they had bought the condiments at Corazón's Cafe" (116). El Building was no longer just a tenement in Paterson. "The walls had absorbed the smells of their food. El Building had become their country now." This can be read two ways: either that El Building was now their home, or that El Building stands for Puerto Rico. Either way, food and the smells of food are essential to creating this homeland for Corazón and her family and neighbors.
When the community in El Building finds out Manuel is dead, they do the only thing they can: they come to the store to buy food for the holidays, showing Corazón that they still need her. She serves the customers coffee and pastries, and "[listens] to them talk about her Manuel" (114). Having begun her day planning to close down the shop, because "[she] did not think she could stay in this place without Manuel" (106), she now "[feels] Manuel's presence in the store" (114). Not only that, but her home, empty of the man she loves, now feels like home to her again, as she "[inhales] deeply the aromas of her country" and climbs the stairs to go to her apartment at the end of the day, a day in which her neighbors have reminded her of her place in the community, and of Manuel's lasting impact on them (116). His dream had been that the store would be a place "where both the body and the spirit could be nourished" (106); he understood the important truth that food and home cannot and will not be separated.
Works Cited
Cofer, Judith Ortiz, perf. Birthwrite: Growing up Hispanic. Dir. Luis R. Torres. Cinema Guild, 1989. Film.
---. "Corazó's Café." The Latin Deli: Prose and Poetry by Judith Ortiz Cofer.Athens, Georgia: U of Georgia P, 1993. 93-116. Print.
---. "The Latin Deli: An Ars Poetica." The Latin Deli: Prose and Poetry by Judith Ortiz Cofer.Athens, Georgia: U of Georgia P, 1993. 3-4. Print.
It's been a long time since I read this book, but if I remember right, it passes the Bechdel test. Have you read it more recently?
Judith Ortiz Cofer's The Latin Deli explores culture and belonging in every poem, story, and essay. In these pieces, Cofer weaves threads of family, gender, race, and body image together into stories and poems, both factual and fictionalized, in an insular community of Puerto Rican migrants in Paterson, New Jersey. Another thread in the story of belonging among the residents of El Building is food: the food of Puerto Rico and the gift of love inherent in feeding one's family and community. Two of the pieces in the collection tell parallel tales of food and family: the opening poem, "The Latin Deli: An Ars Poetica," and the short story "Corazó's Café." In them, Cofer uses food and its aromas as metaphors for childhood, home, and cultural belonging.
Though the two pieces were written about two different real-life places, one in Paterson and one in Georgia ("Birthwrite"), the parallels are many, and the proprietors may as well be the same woman. The woman in "The Latin Deli: An Ars Poetica" is called "The Patroness of Exiles" (3); in "Corazó's Café," the ó(literally "heart") of the title runs the store along with her husband, Manuel, who has just died when the piece begins. The Patroness of Exiles knows that the foods she offers, "canned memories" (3), are sensory links to the homes that the migrants have left behind:
...she smiles understanding,
when they walk down the narrow aisles of her store
reading the labels of packages aloud, as if
they were the names of lost lovers: Suspiros,
Merengues, the stale candy of everyone's childhood. (3)
Suspiros (literally "sighs") and merengues are baked meringues, overly sweet children's food. The people in the Latin deli are recovering childhood by remembering these candies; so are Corazó's customers, as they shop for "assorted candies from several South American countries with curious names like Suspirosand Merengues" (94). The Patroness of Exiles exudes "maternal interest" (3) as her patrons become her children in a symbolic fashion; similarly, people in Corazó's Café her as "a plump mother to everyone" (111), and they "[depend] on her and Manuel to provide them with a taste of home.... Manuel was never happier than when he was planning the food to celebrate life and never more beautiful in Corazón's eyes than when he comforted the grieving widow or orphan with food prepared with all the care and love he had to give" (112). Ironically, Corazón herself doesn't have a mother to call to memory, nor does she have a child of her own, yet she is the mother figure for a whole community of people whose almost spiritual need for certain foods is satisfied in her shop.
Where there is food, there are love and family. Conversely, food is barely mentioned in the descriptions of the time that Corazón lives, motherless, in the house run by her elder sister, where their drunken father is alternately absent and abusive. For a short while, Corazón has a mother substitute in Manuel's mother, DoñSerena, and food comes back into the story. After Corazón's first night in Manuel's bed, DoñSerena gives her a dress to wear and sets the table for three for "a delicious breakfast of homemade bread and guava jelly" while they plan Corazón and Manuel's wedding (101). Corazón feels "sense of peace sitting in that sunny kitchen with these two people she would now call her family.... It was as if she had a mother again to take care of her" (102).
It is not only the nuclear family whose importance is underscored by Cofer's reliance on food images in these stories. Equally important in the stories and poems is a sense of cultural belonging, of connection to place in the geopolitical sense. The Suspiros and Merengues don't just connect people to their individual childhoods; they tie them to a particular food in a particular place and time, to their shared history in Puerto Rico. The Patroness of Exiles provides one such food to her customers, her metaphorical children:
...plain ham and cheese
that would cost less at the A&P, but it would not satisfy
the hunger of the fragile old man lost in the folds
of his winter coat, who brings her lists of items
that he reads to her like poetry, or the others,
whose needs she must divine, conjuring up products
from places that now exist only in their hearts‒
closed ports she must trade with. (4)
These "closed ports" signify the sad reality that not only can't the residents of El Building go back to Puerto Rico‒whether because of finances, age, or even their own deaths‒but the Puerto Rico of their childhoods doesn't even exist any more.
While their home country is not available to the people in the neighborhood, the foods they remember, and the aromas of those foods, are. When Corazón and her late husband found the spot for the store, formerly an Italian deli, "Manuel claimed that he could still smell in the wood the spices that had been sold there. It had 'corazon y alma,' he claimed, making a pun with her name, 'heart and soul'" (111). Similarly, he had told her that "simply from the lingering smells [in El Building], he could tell her what each family in each apartment had had for dinner that evening and whether they had bought the condiments at Corazón's Cafe" (116). El Building was no longer just a tenement in Paterson. "The walls had absorbed the smells of their food. El Building had become their country now." This can be read two ways: either that El Building was now their home, or that El Building stands for Puerto Rico. Either way, food and the smells of food are essential to creating this homeland for Corazón and her family and neighbors.
When the community in El Building finds out Manuel is dead, they do the only thing they can: they come to the store to buy food for the holidays, showing Corazón that they still need her. She serves the customers coffee and pastries, and "[listens] to them talk about her Manuel" (114). Having begun her day planning to close down the shop, because "[she] did not think she could stay in this place without Manuel" (106), she now "[feels] Manuel's presence in the store" (114). Not only that, but her home, empty of the man she loves, now feels like home to her again, as she "[inhales] deeply the aromas of her country" and climbs the stairs to go to her apartment at the end of the day, a day in which her neighbors have reminded her of her place in the community, and of Manuel's lasting impact on them (116). His dream had been that the store would be a place "where both the body and the spirit could be nourished" (106); he understood the important truth that food and home cannot and will not be separated.
Works Cited
Cofer, Judith Ortiz, perf. Birthwrite: Growing up Hispanic. Dir. Luis R. Torres. Cinema Guild, 1989. Film.
---. "Corazó's Café." The Latin Deli: Prose and Poetry by Judith Ortiz Cofer.Athens, Georgia: U of Georgia P, 1993. 93-116. Print.
---. "The Latin Deli: An Ars Poetica." The Latin Deli: Prose and Poetry by Judith Ortiz Cofer.Athens, Georgia: U of Georgia P, 1993. 3-4. Print.
It's been a long time since I read this book, but if I remember right, it passes the Bechdel test. Have you read it more recently?