Eating Against the Grain: Parsi Cuisine and Feminist Resistance in Sujata Massey's Perveen Mistry Series

ABSTRACT In American author Sujata Massey's Perveen Mistry series, food is a central narrative device that explores cultural identity, memory, and feminist agency. Parsi cuisine, which blends Persian and Indian influences, archives the community's history, reflecting continuity and adaptation in colonial India. Perveen Mistry sees food as a repository of emotional and cultural memory, a source of spiritual and psychological sustenance, and a tool for navigating personal and societal challenges. Beyond private ritual, Perveen engages with public dining spaces and selectively resists domestic culinary expectations, asserting autonomy and subverting patriarchal norms. Framed through food studies and feminist geography, this paper argues that Massey elevates culinary practices to instruments of subtle yet potent feminist resistance, illustrating how food mediates identity, agency, and social negotiation in early 20th‐century Bombay.