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Joan Fry, "How to Cook a Tapir: A Memoir of Belize"

In 1962 Joan Fry was a college sophomore recently married to a dashing anthropologist. Naively consenting to a year-long “working honeymoon” in British Honduras (now Belize), she soon found herself living in a remote Kekchi village deep in the rainforest. Because Fry had no cooking or housekeeping experience, the romance of living in a hut and learning to cook on a makeshift stove quickly faded. Guided by the village women and their children, this twenty-year-old American who had never made more than instant coffee came eventually to love the people and the food that at first had seemed so foreign. While her husband conducted his clinical study of the native population, Fry entered their world through friendships forged over an open fire. Coming of age in the jungle among the Kekchi and Mopan Maya, Fry learned to teach, to barter and negotiate, to hold her ground, and to share her space—and, perhaps most important, she learned to cook.

This is the funny, heartfelt, and provocative story of how Fry painstakingly baked and boiled her way up the food chain, from instant oatmeal and flour tortillas to bush-green soup, agouti (a big rodent), gibnut (a bigger rodent), and, finally, something even the locals wouldn’t tackle: a “mountain cow,” or tapir. Fry’s efforts to win over her neighbors and hair-pulling students offers a rare and insightful picture of the Kekchi Maya of Belize, even as this unique culture was disappearing before her eyes.

Summary: Great Experience!

Rating: 5

Having traveled extensively in Belize I thoroughly enjoyed reading about Joan's experiences. I found the prose well written and enjoyable to read. The book offers great insight into living with the Maya in the 1960's. I highly recommend to anyone who loves Belize or is interested in a memoir set in the sub tropics.

Summary: How to Cook a Tapir

Rating: 5

Since I'm familiar with Belize I really enjoyed Joan's account of her experience. A great read for anyone!

Summary: All the ingredients of a great book

Rating: 5

This is a very thought-provoking, funny, and, ultimately, moving book about a young American woman's year-long sojourn in a Mayan village in Belize in the early 1960s. Newly married to an anthropologist on a mission to study Mayan culture, Joan Fry is deposited in the middle of the jungle, given a stack of Dick and Jane books, and left to figure out how to teach the local children English. And that's the easy part. Not only is Fry a teacher, she is also a student of life skills, constantly under the supervision and surveillance of the Maya as she struggles to master such tasks as how to balance a bucket of water on her head, how to cook on a comal over a fire, and how to "go bush" in the night without stepping on scorpions or tarantulas. The narrative traces the ways in which "Teacher" gradually gains the respect, acceptance, and love of her neighbors--a process sadly paralleled by the increasing emotional distance between herself and her husband.

This culinary-memoir-cum-travel-book offers recipes at the close of each chapter that demonstrate twenty-year-old Fry's rite of passage from cooking rookie to domestic goddess, beginning with such fare as packet Knorr soup, and tortillas with sardines; and ending with Escabeche, and Bush Greens with Garbanzos. It's fascinating to follow the way she negotiates her relationship with her surroundings through what she puts onto and into her body--she casts off her bra, but balks at going topless. She savors tapir steaks, but spits out a bristly pig's anus when it bobs up in a bowl of caldo made by a neighbor.

How to Cook a Tapir is for foodies who like travel narratives, and anyone who underwent a rough initiation into marriage at a young age. Like a good meal, it's satisfying, yet leaves you wanting more. The scene when the priest arrives in the village at the same time as two copulating quadrupeds is not to be missed.

Summary: A journey from Convict Soup to Tapir

Rating: 5

Imagine spending your honeymoon on a pig boat and being unceremoniously introduced to your newlywed home, consisting of a dirt floor and some stones to cook on. Imagine finding out that your new latrine is in the 'bush' and that the only source of water involves climbing a hill with a bucket on your head. Imagine lying awake in you hammock all night waiting for the next tarantula to drop on your face. Imagine being alone in a village, where no one speaks your language, everyone knows your business and where the other women make it obvious that they think you are useless excuse for a wife.

You have to give Joan Fry, the author of 'How to Cook a Tapir - A memoir of Belize' a lot of credit for maintaining her sense of humour when most sensible women would have packed up and gone home. In 1962, her anthropologist husband dragged her off to the rain forest of Belize to live with the Kekchi Maya, so that he could further his studies. Only 20 years old and from a comfortable American life, Ms. Fry, does what only a woman with a strong constitution in those circumstances could, she cooks.

Truthfully, she attempts to cook - badly at first. As she yearns to gain acceptance in her new community of curious neighbours, she discovers the real meaning of culture shock. But we all have to eat and that was the bridge that Ms. Fry built and crossed to not only discover the magic and wonder of the Maya people but also to discover that her new husband was truly an [...].

How to Cook a Tapir takes readers through an evocative journey, experiencing the wonders of life in the rainforest through the naive but highly intelligent eyes of a girl becoming a woman in completely alien circumstances. Every chapter ends with a recipe that represents the knowledge and wisdom she gains from her entertaining, frustrating and sometimes frightening experiences.

Anyone who is interested in the Maya people, their culture, their food or their way of life, will find this uniquely insightful book a real eye opener. Anyone who is interested in food, will find some of the authentic Maya recipes a gastronomic adventure and absolutely anyone who has found themselves in love with someone who rapidly disappoints them will empathise, sympathise and ocassionally guffaw at the author's sometimes clumsy attempts at being a good wife.

I highly recommend this book and can't wait for the movie.

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Rating:
2.5 out of 5 by Book123