RhetTech
I Bet You Don’t Know What’s Really in Black Cake: The Rhetorics of Trinidadian Black Cake and Recipe
Abstract
In a food blog-style post, I reflect on my own connection to black cake – a liquor soaked fruit cake born from the enslavement of African people in the Caribbean – while examining the cultural and food rhetorics around this delicacy to understand how the tragic meaning of black cake has evolved into a joyous one: for eating and sharing with family during the holiday season. Using the historical context as a footing for my exploration, I draw on additional scholarship and a short story to note how food intersects with identity and power. From black cake’s rhetorically ironic ingredients – sugar and rum – and its black colouring, to the newer holiday associated “unmeaning” of black cake that stems from intergenerational relationships in a globalizing world, I decode the colonial and post-colonial information found within black cake. Hungry for more? Find my mother’s black cake recipe listed at the end.
Recommended Citation
Lappin, Jessica
(2023)
"I Bet You Don’t Know What’s Really in Black Cake:
The Rhetorics of Trinidadian Black Cake and Recipe,"
RhetTech: Vol. 5, Article 13.
Available at:
https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/rhettech/vol5/iss1/13
