Cooking as "Garbage Work": Perspectives of Resistance through Food in Short Stories from Indian Women Authors

Abstract: Domestic work, which has been deemed a lower form of aesthetic pursuit in the axiology of labor, is often considered "garbage" work. With women at the helm of domestic labor and cooking, this notion of garbage also gets attached to them through association, making this gender a garbage being in society. Yet, as this paper aims to present, this "garbage" work of cooking has been repeatedly used by these "garbage" women as a tool to resist the psychosocial stigma of devalued work attached to their identity. Through an analysis of short stories written by women authors from India—namely, Githa Hariharan's "Remains of the Feast," Purabi Basu's "French Leave," and Radhika Jha's "Initiation"—this paper will look at how women use cooking and eating as a form of everyday resistance against patriarchal constructs of gender and power.