Cannibal Writes: Eating Others in Caribbean and Indian Ocean Women’s Writing by Njeri Githire (review)

corpus, subject to censorship in some editions (328–32) or dismissed as childish and gratuitously campy in others (for instance by Philippe Sollers in L’œil de Proust, 1999), is here given thoughtful critical consideration, revealing its richness as “secret” but also “inventive, full of humor, and never ironic” (328). The volume’s handsome material presentation (60 illustrations, many in color) partakes in the same attention: whenever possible, Proust’s drawings are here reproduced as actual objects (existing on a material support, usually semi-translucent paper with a thick border), rather than as the decontextualized black-and-white images first published in Lettres à Reynaldo Hahn (1956) and often reprinted since. While the density of scrutiny throughout the collection could be thought to occasion repetitions (multiple contributors sometimes cite the same passages from Proust’s novel), editors choose to emphasize this through cross-references, creating instead a network of perspectives and recalls not wholly dissimilar from the structure of the Recherche. This exemplary book makes a significant contribution to Proust studies and sets a high scholarly, editorial, and aesthetic standard for edited collections. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign François Proulx Githire,Njeri.CannibalWrites: Eating Others in Caribbean and Indian OceanWomen’s Writing. Champaign: UP of Illinois, 2014. ISBN 978-0-252-03878-5. Pp. 256. $55. Close textual analyses in this study of works by female writers of Caribbean and Indian Ocean regions serve to reverse western mythical views of non-western and colonized peoples as cannibals.An abundance of metaphorical images of cannibalism, consumption or refusal of food, and excretion in the works of Monique Agénor (Reunion Island), Lindsey Collen and Marie-Thérèse Humbert (Mauritius), Maryse Condé and Gisèle Pineau (Guadeloupe),Andrea Levy (Jamaica),and Edwidge Danticat (Haiti) underscore sexual, political, and social hierarchies and prove that the real “cannibals” are those who wield power in these realms. In her introduction, Githire explains her focus on postcolonial island regions, with their clear geographical boundaries , because they were/are the locus of trade and consumption of comestible goods, like sugar, coffee, and spices, and “comestible” peoples whose labor was/is consumed in global trade. Githire uses word play throughout to force a renewed examination of two sides of the same coin in expressions like “(non)eating,” the “(m)other figure,” “(neo)colonial,” “(neo)imperial,” “(un)consciously,” and the clever title of her third chapter, “Dis(h)coursing Hunger.” The first chapter compares Condé’s The Story of the Cannibal Woman and Levy’s Small Island, both of whom establish a link between sexual and gustatory appetites, and develop interpretations of family dynamics as metaphors for imperial/colonial “cannibalism.” Both the colonized and immigrants from the colonies are often portrayed as voracious in eating resources of the imperial nation. Yet, Githire argues that both Condé and Levy reverse this cannibal image 232 FRENCH REVIEW 90.4 Reviews 233 through their main female characters. Sexual and familial relationships of submission to the mother/father allegorize the true power dynamics at play. Chapter 2 examines images of disease, contamination, indigestion, and regurgitation in the works of Danticat, Levy, and Pineau who foreground misplaced fear of subversion of the values of the dominant host country by the unappetizing unassimilable other. Collen’s efforts to dispel the myth of Mauritius as a tourist gustatory paradise is the focus of the third chapter, while chapter four allegorizes writing in Indian Ocean texts of Agénor and Humbert as a pirating activity that mimics cannibalism since those who write island histories control the narrative for public consumption. This last chapter provides useful historical and geopolitical context for current problems in the region, helping the reader to comprehend the fictional representations of the interplay of allegorized cannibals and the cannibalized. Githire’s book offers an impressive mixture of scholarly supporting materials, careful and thorough close textual analyses, and insertion of helpful historical and geopolitical information to guide readers unfamiliar with the regions in question. Githire’s study, and particular focus on women writers of island regions, is an important and well-researched addition to ongoing discussions among scholars of the proliferation of food imagery in postcolonial women’s writings. Since the texts under scrutiny...