Cheryl
Boyce-Taylor published her poetry collection Arrival in remembrance of
her mother, an ode to her immigration to the U.S., and of her attachment to her
home country, Trinidad. Many of the poems in this collection align with these
themes. However, looking deeper into specific poems shows the audience that Arrival
is about much more than that. The author struggles with many forms of
insecurities and presents them in these poems – her insecurity with her
familial relationships, insecurities with food stemming from (and potentially causing)
her “sugar-diabetes” diagnosis, and insecurities about being in a new place, as
she migrates from the West Indies to America. Throughout the poems, Taylor
incorporates references to various foods from her native country. Most
prominently, mangoes, limes and hibiscus. The poet uses explicit references to
food to symbolize and describe her implicit insecurities and how they relate to
and exasperate one another.
Culture,
in general, is heavily defined by food and foodways everywhere one could go.
Cheryl Boyce-Taylor heavy-handedly uses food throughout her poetry in Arrival,
and though this collection was written while Taylor was a citizen living in
America, the food she uses is familiar to her from her childhood in Trinidad.
According to Fred Gardaphe and Xu Wenying, authors of the introduction of Food
in Multi-Ethnic Literatures, “Food often has an ability to last longer as a
signifier for ethnicity than other markers, such as language or fashion” (7). When
writing Arrival, Taylor was a fully situated American citizen. She has
existed within American culture long enough to be considered assimilated, but
the food from her home country is what defines her as a Trinidadian immigrant –
it is the piece of culture which she can hold onto. Cheryl Boyce-Taylor
connects with the foods from back home years after she has immigrated, however,
she does so in a complicated manner. As a diabetic, Taylor’s relationship with
food is an apparent insecurity of hers, as is seen in poems such as “Sugar” and
“Zuihitsu on Eating Poems”. However, it is curious that Taylor continues to use
fruit throughout Arrival as she explores other insecurities she has with
her body, her homeland, and her relationship with her father.
Struggling
with dietary issues for a long while, Cheryl Boyce-Taylor uses poems like
“Sugar” and “Zuihitsu on Eating Poems” to discuss her insecurities and expresses
in these poems her issues with eating sweet foods versus eating foods that
promote her health (mangoes and pineapple versus hibiscus/sorrel and caraili
bush). In “Sugar”, Taylor explores her pancreas and how its failing disrupted
her life, “from hibiscus to orange blossom // from insulin shock to // hospital
bed // the thud of ripe mangoes falling in thick mud” (6). The symbolism of
mangoes appears here, but it is not their sweet taste the poet dwells on. The
sound of them falling when they haven’t yet been picked is what haunts her as
she combats her failing pancreas. The sound is sudden, and remarkable, to the
reader in this moment. The sweetness of a ripe mango is not mentioned, but
swiftly ignored as the author ponders hibiscus and insulin shock. This turn
away from mentioning the mangoes taste screams avoidance, and possibly shame –
illuminating the use of the fruit to highlight Taylor’s insecurities with
desiring to eat sweet fruits rather than the sorrel and caraili bush which
would level out her symptoms rather than antagonizing them.
The
reader is then brought to “Zuihitsu on Eating Poems”. Zuihitsu is a genre from Japanese culture
which, while taught in literature courses, “[defies] definition or
categorization” (DiNitto 251). Overall, however, Zuihitsu is loosely translated
to mean a miscellaneous collection, or catch-all, of written thoughts. It is
interesting, then, that Taylor would name a poem “Zuihitsu on Eating Poems” –
and as a reader I find it ironic that so much meaning is packed into a poem
titled after a genre with means, essentially, to be without form and meaning.
This poem presents itself as descriptions of foods and foodways, mentioning
pineapple, hibiscus (Jamaican sorrel), quinoa and heirloom tomatoes and
describes feeding her son and “sprinkling poems on [her] honeydew melon” (8).
This poem contains pieces of Taylor blatantly expressing her own relationship
with food and poetry – and it insinuates, by title and by content, that the two
go hand in hand, at least for her. This is very common for ethnic authors, who
often use their native foods to maintain comfort and safety when they feel
displaced (Gardaphe and Wenying 7). In this sense, “Zuihitsu on Eating Poems”
does not just deal with Taylor’s insecurities with her disease and her
relationship, because of it, to food, but also with her longing for home, in
the Caribbean.
Poems
in this collection like “Leaving Trinidad” and “Gone” come back to back for a
sort of doubling ache on the readers part. “Leaving Trinidad” addresses the
fears of young Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, only fourteen, leaving her family. By the
end of this poem, the fear buckles her and she is sobbing, she claims “I could
barely hear anything” (24) after describing the advice and encouragement spoke
by her family members in this moment. This moment portrays the sort of insecurity
Taylor feels, and felt, of this moment in her life. Being unsure of her future
without her Mammie, and insecure about the decision to go to the America
“that’s not so bad” (24). In these poems, however, the poet does not refer to
fruits or even to sorrel. Her fears are evident enough without them. As it is, the
strained relationship between her new and old home involves food production
itself, including her personal narrative in a much larger context than herself.
The
Caribbean and the United States have a strained relationship, as it pertains to
food and foodways, between the two. Marked prosperity in the U.S. nearly always
creates scarcity in the West Indies – farmers in the area, such as Taylor’s
father in Trinidad, produce the fruit and foods and Americans consume it. After
it is shipped elsewhere for production, it arrives back in the Caribbean, and
is now too expensive for purchase by lower and middle-class West Indians, who
did the growing and picking of the fruits themselves (Gardaphe and Wenying 9). For
obvious reasons, this creates economic strain on the area. It is never
suggested why Taylor was making the move from her home to the strange and new
city of New York – but it can be inferred or assumed that it was for
educational and professional opportunity that she would not have had access to,
culturally or economically, in Trinidad. New York, being the landing spot for
immigration from all nations, contains many Caribbean immigrants, who fare the
best among other immigrants, even those of European descent (Wilson). Cheryl
Boyce-Taylor, despite her insecurities and anxieties surrounding her
motivation, settled into Queens and made a living for herself; becoming
successful in the eyes of her family and home. Food, and the lack of food symbolism
in poems directly about home in Arrival, is as such because the tension
between Taylor’s differing “homes” and their relationship to food, rather than
her own, is already underlying everything about the situation, rooting food to
her insecurities in a deeply instilled manner.
Most
clear, it seems, is the insecurity Taylor feels in her relationship with her
father: a philandering, aloof figure throughout this collection of poems.
Taylor struggles to know and decide whether or not she can love her father.
There are moments like “Toco” where Taylor blatantly states, “I still loved
him” (9), insinuating that there was a definite moment where she stopped. Later
in the poem it is alluded that he abandoned her as she states she waited, “. .
. for a postcard . . . for the flared crowing of his voice” (9). However, it’s
apparent that the poet feels insecure even in her acts of non-love – in “Limes
for the Journey” Taylor yearns for forgiveness. Her “rage” paints him as a
drunken, crazy stranger while she recalls his kiss as delicious. “Toco” returns
to the use of food to symbolize insecurity: ginger lemonade, a spicy/sour treat
is contrasted to sweet, fresh orange slices. Likewise, both mangoes and limes
are used in “Limes for the Journey”, symbolizing the sweetness that her father
once showed her (mangoes), with the sour that her father last gave her (limes).
These moments bring the symbolism of fruit to a bud for the purposes of this
essay; of the overt and seemingly endless references to food in this
collection, it is apparent that they are always juxtaposed against another to
create a binary: good or bad for Taylor, or sweet versus sour.
Following
“Leaving Trinidad”, a moment where the reader is exposed to a terrifying and
emotional moment in Cheryl Boyce-Taylor’s life, we are presented with “Gone”.
The latter is a poem that begins to include multiple levels of Taylor’s
apparent insecurities. In “Leaving Trinidad”, Taylor is supported by her family
and their encouragement, even if she in that moment is decidedly devastated. In
contrast comes “Gone”, which shows the poet’s insecurities with leaving
Trinidad as well as those dealing with her paternal relationship. In a moment
of extreme fear, the climax of her departure to America, boarding the plane,
Taylor looks back for support from her father – only to find him already gone.
It is striking, too, the final line in this poem is, “my world already turned
from me” (25). This traces back to aforementioned issues with Taylor and her
feelings toward her father. While she is clearly painting her father in a
negative fashion here, she is also convinced that he is her world – both her
mango and her lime. Otherwise, she is equating her father and her love for him
to Trinidad and her love for home, and her love from home is tied directly to
the foods she eats – and it is expressed as such throughout this collection of
poetry.
Cheryl-Boyce Taylor’s collection Arrival
serves as a place to recognize and honor American immigrants and where they
come from. The title of the collection links each poem back to the idea that
Taylor is an immigrant who has arrived in America – and when she arrived, she
was confronted with her many insecurities in a lonesome fashion. Turning to
poetry, it seems, Taylor has contributed to modern poetics by giving a voice to
immigrants who wish to tell their story. In Arrival, Taylor does so by
relaying her story through the use of foods which trace back to the Caribbean,
tethering her and her insecurities to what was once her home. The symbolism of
the food is to imply that her insecurities come from a place that is rooted in
her, her diabetes, her immigrant status, and the relationship with her
fruit-farming father. The ideas that food, foodways, and food politics define
Cheryl Boyce-Taylor and her insecurities are implicit, and to be inferred in
the text, tell the reader that it is possible that Taylor is not even aware of
such implications herself. The cultural implications of food and foodways
surround everyone in different fashions, and should be studied as such in
literature.
Works Cited
Boyce-Taylor, Cheryl. Arrival. Triquarterly
Books, 2017.
DiNitto, Rachel. “Return of the
‘Zuihitsu’: Print Culture, Modern Life, and Heterogeneous Narrative in Prewar
Japan.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, vol. 64, no. 2, 2004, pp. 251–290.
JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25066743. Accessed 7 Feb. 2020.
Gardaphé, Fred L., and Wenying Xu.
“Introduction: Food in Multi-Ethnic Literatures.” MELUS, vol. 32, no. 4, 2007,
pp. 5–10. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30029828.
Accessed 13 Feb. 2020.
Wilson, Basil. "Caribbean
Immigrants in New York City and the Rise of a Black Middle Class in Southeast
Queens." Wadabagei : A Journal of the Caribbean and its Diaspora, vol. 12,
no. 1, 2009, pp. 33-45. ProQuest,
https://ezproxy.library.ewu.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.library.ewu.edu/docview/200346248?accountid=7305.
