Seeing red

On pomegranates, hierarchies, and erasure

My last post on a chaotic breakfast routine was received warmly by readers and now there many new subscribers—welcome! If you like this newsletter, follow 💌shelfoffering on Instagram and please share this with a friend or two.

Pomegranates and watermelons, symbols of abundance and resistance, as painted by Paul Cézanne

In what I think can only be described as an act of phishing, The Cut published a piece by Danielle Cohen on why they were “not ready for a pomegranate comeback”. The essay in question was undoubtedly meant to be clickbait. And by responding to the piece indirectly, I have taken the bait¹. But instead of replying in kind, i.e. write a lazy, appalling piece that subverts the importance of the fruit in the countries and cultures that celebrate it, I’m viewing this as an opportunity for educating (myself mostly) and also perhaps selfishly, for fulfilling today’s newsletter quota.

As is my trademark, I’m going to start with an etymology lesson: that the pomegranate derives its name from Latin, where pome or pomum means apple and granatum means seeded². Because the fruit is so ruby red and incisive, it makes sense that garnet also derives from the pomegranate, but more formally via metathesis, which is when sounds or syllables are interchanged in a word(s)³.

Next, a (brief) history lesson. The pomegranate is said to have originated in the area that extends from Afghanistan and Iran to parts of Pakistan and north India before it spread throughout the Mediterranean, to China (100 BCE) possibly via ancient trade routes, and was introduced to the Caribbean and Spanish colonies of America by the Spanish empire. The Phoenicians also introduced pomegranates in their colonies in Africa sometime in 2000 BCE. It’s one of the oldest known edible fruits, domesticated as early as 5 BCE, and like Cohen writes, it symbolises fertility and abundance.

Of course The Cut does not go into details of etymology or history; it’s a puff piece written to elicit anger, disappointment, and engagement from the vast corners of the internet. It does, however, touch upon the fruit’s symbolism in history across a few cultures, but even that is half-hearted except for one or two that the publication deems prominent. Would it be presumptuous to assume that this omission was by choice and not unintentional? Maybe, but it does feel overwhelmingly considered. Their Instagram post also drew quick ire from fans of the fruit, fellow food writers, and just people with a decent palate. My own Instagram story⁴, which I titled “sorry but WHAT”, elicited more than a few responses from Internet friends I only know by writing merit, who confirmed that we were all thinking the same thing: that it was suspiciously timed (genocide) and deliberate to overlook so many other cultures (SWANA) that celebrate the fruit.

If it seems like I’m splitting hairs, it’s because The Cut got there first. The omission of countries such as Afghanistan, Iran⁵, Palestine, Egypt or the region of Kurdistan in the piece is glaring and actually not-so-puzzling despite the pomegranate’s weighty importance across their cultures⁶, religions, and cuisines, from dishes such as fesenjān, ash-e anar, dabeli, kollivozoumi, muhammara. Pomegranate finds use as fruit, juice, juice reduced into molasses and glaze, dried seeds, and paste to impart both tart and sweet flavours in a dish. The fruit also finds itself inserted in art, particularly into paintings of still life and mythology where it has come to symbolise resurrection, desire, fertility, and purity.

The Cut’s framing of the argument on flimsy bases—that the fruit is popping up in memes and poems (but it’s okay if the girlies put a bow on it) or that it does not taste good, stains everything, and is “not even that good for you” because the Federal Trade Commission sued a random brand selling pomegranate juice 14 years ago—is not only insane but also erases the palates that depend on this fruit and the cultural traditions upheld by the non-Western world. The fact that this take gives into pointless trends, advocated no doubt by white tastemakers, which capitalise on the power to ignore what a certain thing (here, the pomegranate) means to just about everyone else is exhausting, time and time again. Who are these trends for? (A Western audience.) Who makes such decisions, and what are the consequences?

Gleaming red beauties that I snapped on Sunday

It reminds me of the NYT piece published at the height of lockdown in June 2020, which described eating Thai fruit as requiring “laborious peeling and careful chewing”, followed by “sticky fingers and occasional disappointment”. I’ve eaten jackfruit and sucked on mangoes a thousand times, only discovered the rambutan quite late and rectified that mistake, and I agree, my hands are sticky after the whole process. (Also, all fruits are sticky by nature!!!) And it is laborious. But that hasn’t stopped me and countless others from consuming said fruits. Nor has it stopped a section of the food media from exoticising or reducing a culture’s cuisine into a single entity. The same jackfruit whose “extraction” process was deemed “painstaking” by the NYT is now celebrated as a champion meat replacement

Going by the tone-deaf and never-failing logic of both publications, if jackfruit and pomegranate are a “pain in the ass to eat”, what fruit is worth eating then? Only a banana perhaps. Of course a banana, they would say. Because they’d be hard-pressed to remember that the banana’s manufactured journey not only includes its eventual death and destruction, but also the death and destruction of people in the Caribbean and Central America, the formation of coups and regimes, and eventually an American Empire. But how does that matter when the banana is so commonplace, so wholesome, so fundamentally part of an American diet that fails to acknowledge the fruit’s violent past, present, and future, co-opted by a handful of companies?

Both the NYT and The Cut’s pieces, come from a hierarchy created by white folks in Western media who have the privilege and the power to classify what foods are deemed tasty, what foods should be trending, and what foods hold cultural value. Both essays also decontextualise, erase, and simultaneously fetishise food to the point where it has to be homogenous to be understood and accessible or forgotten because it’s no longer trendy enough. Writer and labour lawyer Lorraine Chuen writes about this in the context of who gets to be an authority on ethnic cuisines.

What remains of food, after it’s been decontextualized? What are flavours without stories? What are recipes without histories? Why are people of colour forgotten, over and over again, while their food (also: vocabulary, music, art, hair, clothing) are consumed and adopted?

I’m joining Roxana Hadadi in asking, “why should you care about this?” In this brilliant essay on Roman and the ethnic erasure in popular food culture, Hadadi writes that “Roman’s refusal to acknowledge the groups and peoples and cultures she’s pulling from allows her to present herself as the sole authority on these kinds of foods,” while also excluding herself as having any ties to any culture whatsoever. This unique Frankenidentity of authority with no context feels like an expertise begotten by stealth. If The Cut tries to position itself as a champion of trends, promising a sort of aspirational desire—in other words, gate keeping—the bare minimum would be to not participate in the erasure of cultures of people of colour.

Nevertheless, I have a lot of questions for the team at The Cut. It’s one thing trying to pre-cancel the fruit (and the people who honour and cultivate it) before it even becomes a trend, but to deem it “not good” makes no sense. As someone in the Instagram comments wrote, “did a grape write this?” Is Danielle Cohen in the grips of the strawberry mafia? Has Big Fruit orchestrated a takedown of pomegranate because it fears not keeping up with the demand after the memes blow up in the summer? Has no one at The Cut tasted a fruit™ before? Does it need to be plumbed from the depths of Erewhon and mixed into some kind of goddess smoothie? Do they get someone else to peel their bananas? Or worse still, do they eat bananas with a knife and fork?

By looking for trends, The Cut assumes a notion of divine omniscience that certain—Western, white—ideas are universal, that certain foods or cooking styles confer social status upon consumers (and producers) while others do not, and that commodifying certain foods and ideas can civilise taste (wrongly so). Indeed, the charm of the pomegranate lies beyond its gleaming red skin, the intricate pattern of its tannic glistening pearls, the tiny crown on its head akin to royalty, or the red juice that so magnificently stains your skin⁷. I love how the pomegranate’s beauty belies the violence required to crack it open. First score the skin and split into two, then either whack on its head or keep submerged in water till you separate the white pith from the jewels. It’s not for nothing that a derivation of pomegranate (in French) bequeaths grenade⁸, red shrapnel embedded inside comes bursting forth—whether abundance or endurance!

In the words of the everlasting meme: ohh my god, you’re not ready for a pomegranate comeback? should we tell everyone? should we throw a party?should we invite Bella Hadid? I hope we do. Maybe she can explain that ethnic foods are not a freak show and do not need simplifying and rescuing from white media saviours.

The next newsletter on 19 January will be a paid subscriber post containing a conversation with chef and researcher Elizabeth Yorke.

Miscellaneous

• In digestion has a great roundup on why one must always be citing.

• Happy Pongal/Makar Sankranti to those who celebrate, may it bless you with abundance!

• I’ve started an Instagram to document the posts I publish on this newsletter. It’s mostly an exercise in confidence because I’m always wary and fearful of promoting my work anywhere (but I have to do it!!). Also, it’s a fun way for me to indulge in colour, graphics, and irreverence.

1. Recalling a meme I saw earlier today to my defence: Since we’re forced to participate and thrive under capitalism, it only makes sense to criticise it.

2. Which I’m guessing arrives from the root granarium that gives granary, a place where grains (granum) are stored.

3. Eg, from the Latin periculum, danger, we get peril; from formaticus or forma, meaning formed in a mold, we get fromage or cheese.

4. I find it hilarious that The Cut has viewed my story. MY, nobody, story!

5. For Yaldā Night (Shab-e Yalda), an ancient and important holiday observed on the winter solstice and celebrated across Iran, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Iraqi Kurdistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Dagestan, Turkey, and by the Baloch communities, friends and family spend the longest night of the year reading poetry and telling stories while eating pomegranates and watermelons alongside dry fruits.

6. In Azerbaijan’s Goychay region, the annual festival Nar Bayrami celebrates the fruit, its uses, and what it represents, from culinary contexts to myths, poetry, storytelling and local agriculture.

7. PSA to the editors at The Cut who fear that the juice will stain: it is washable.

8. Possibly influenced by the Spanish granada, so called because the “many-seeded fruit suggested the powder-filled, fragmenting bomb, or from similarities of shape,” according to the Online Etymology Dictionary.