ABSTRACT
Migrant and refugee lives have been rendered precarious due to poor conditions in camps and detention centres, resettlement issues and food allotment concerns. In fact, the media has fabricated dehumanised textual identities of migrants and refugees as culturally associated with starvation and scarcity. Four recent works counter these pernicious images and narratives, and illustrate that recipes can become texts of resistance. Indeed, translating such works firms up the interwoven nature of gender, culture, memory and activism. The recipes are accompanied by stories that bear witness to violent ruptures, honour communities established in such aftermaths and give voice to women who are responsible for the labour of rebuilding. Historically, there exists a double gendering: food and recipes are stereotyped as the domain of women and have been consistently pushed out of the domain of feminist work. We elaborate a feminist food translation studies framework to counter this double gendering of food studies as well as translation studies. Through this framework, we argue that the translation of these recipes can facilitate the activist work of disseminating collective memory, offer a space to mourn displacement and foster physical and virtual communities.
