Eating Black Bodies: Puff Puff Donuts & Politics of Desire
A classic African street food recipe and how Black femmes are devoured in love, lust, and culture.
Puff puff is an iconic street food snack devoured throughout most of West, Central, and East African countries. ‘Fry Jack’ in Belize, ‘Fry Bake’ in Jamaica and ‘Gulab Jamun’ in India. Ghanaians call it ‘Bofrot’, we Liberians call it ‘Kala’, and ‘mikate’ in Congo. It’s ‘Lokma’ in the Middle East, ‘Bolinho de chuva’ in Brazil and ‘Pa Tong Go’ in Bangkok. Take me to a coal-lit pot of oil in any corner of the globe and there you’ll find a version of puff puff. The sweet golden fried snack that taunts us with its crispy brown exterior and soft sweet insides (recipe below).
Black Coffee.
Sitting on my all white bed, sprawled out, I stuffed pieces of puff puff and chocolate bars into my premenstrual mouth while reading a zoomed-in PDF of Carlyle V. Thompson’s Eating the Black Body: Miscegenation as Sexual Consumption in African American Literature and Culture. It felt appropriate, me, symbolizing the problematic erotic racial food foreshadowing from the 2001 film, Monsters ball. I was fresh out of high school when it came out and it never felt right. I don’t even remember if I even finished watching it on DVD.
In the book’s view, the cult classic and polarizing film promoted a harmful and foolish idea that the redemption and the reconciliation of racial tensions can be achieved through interracial encounters and sex. The diabolical belief that the mere act of intercourse—without fully confronting the social and cultural forces that continue to dehumanize Black bodies—is somehow all it takes to end racism. Many Black feminist thinkers rejected the film as white supremacist fantasy porn. Even so, for her role, Halle Berry received a Screen Actors Guild Award, a BET award, an Academy award, and an Oscar that many celebrated and some criticized, like Carlyle V. Thompson:
“In the eyes of too many white-male Hollywood filmmakers, white people make sensuous love while Black folks have crude sex. The second love scene is tender, with Hank performing oral sex (cunnilingus) on Leticia, but Hank articulates a desire for his chocolate ice cream immediately after they have sexual relations. All the foreshadowing of the chocolate ice cream culminates with Hank literally consuming Leticia's genitals. Nonetheless, Monster's Ball represents a twisted white-male fantasy about Black women being always available for their desires and perversions.
In an insult involving sexuality and race, he refers to Black women as "juice." Buck [Hank’s dad who was in the KKK) tells Leticia, "In my prime I had a thing for nigger juice too" and "you ain't a man till you split dark coal." Here, the issue of the Black female as an object of consumption is brutally racist. Also, like butter on a hot muffin, the word "nig-ger" rolls off of Buck's tongue.”
One of the key aspect of Thompson’s critic of Monster’s Ball is the way in which miscegenation, is framed within the concept of food and consumption. This romanticizes and depicts the union played by Halle Berry and (the then sexy for the working-class) Billy Bob Thornton as a form of racial harmony or “progress”. It’s not. This narrative obscures no pun intended the commonplace violence and exploitative behaviors, words and messaging that often underpins interracial relationships and sometimes Black relationships.
In the widely known essay Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance bell hooks reminds us:
To make one’s self vulnerable to the seduction of difference, to seek an encounter with the Other, does not require that one relinquish forever one’s mainstream positionality. When race and ethnicity become commodified as resources for pleasure, the culture of specific groups, as well as the bodies of individuals, can be seen as constituting an alternative playground where members of dominating races, genders, sexual practices affirm their power-over in intimate relations with the Other.
All relations are historically tied to a power imbalance where bodies are consumed by the dominant, heteronormative, conservative gaze. We can’t gloss this over as just some tired ass race argument. These unimaginative and harmful ways that Black women are placed in positions where our sexual agency is either suppressed, or co-opted, makes the vulnerable bits of us left to be “eaten” or consumed positioned as both "desirable" but and also "disposable." I like duality but this type is troubling as both transgressive and exploitative.
Being A Snack.
I was once involved with someone who identified as Creole first and Black second. From what I could gather, they had a history of dating a majority white women, the most recent—in their early 20’s. Yellow flag. So when I asked if he had dated a Black woman before? he appeared slighted and retorted under his breath that, my relationships with Black women all have been toxic. Red flag.
It was flippant and fucked up, feeding into a Black femme tropes. Umm, obviously, I probed and pushed back on his comment. He later played it off as a joke in response to my earlier question of his dating history with Black women. But the joke just wasn’t funny. Maybe it was rude to ask that question, I thought? And I let it slide. We had been smoking a lot of herb and the foreplay and banter was top tier. So I stuck around for light love-bombing, mixed signals and delicious sex. He worshipped my body, and ate everything like I was a dish on a plater. I was a sweet and sensual snack he would say, an exchange between lovers. I didn’t recognize that I was just being consumed.
It started with my body but I realized it was also in the things that I said, my experiences, my habits and musings were also being consumed. Copy and pasted, slurped up. I was shook only weeks later to hear sentences that I had blurted out in candid conversation now repeated in verbatim. Spoken back to me as though it were thoughts and opinions of his own. He wanted to fuck me and he wanted to be me.
Another lover was an El Salvadorian-born Pisces who eerily absorbed my random obsession with plants and landscape design. Sucking me dry for ideas and inspiration, which could’ve otherwise been mistaken as sweet. He wanted to know where I got my toiletries, and even wanted to move into my apartment when I mentioned moving. Was disgustingly okay with always splitting the check despite working for Meta and earning four times my income.
Just when I thought I was full of him and couldn’t bear to have enough, I learned about his eyebrow raising views on the affirmative action case that at the time, had just been sent to SCOTUS (before its rulling). He informed me that he dated many Asian woman. Red Flag. And made sure to let me know that he had a lot of Asian friends which I guess informed his views? The tea is that many in the AAPI community support affirmative action. Supporting his previous statements he made sure I knew he was learning Japanese, wanted me to sit on his dick raw, and clearly wanted to work out his racial demons with someone who looked like me.
Chocolate Skin.
Rashan was Jamaican born, Black. Raised in Queens and considered himself light-skinned. But his complexion was the same as my bare breasts, dark brown with golden undertones. A mirage of flirty fun photos passed between us for years. We had a deep emotional bond that matched the sexual chemistry. Green flag. It was a relationship based on a decade of platonic friendship and love for very Black and very obscure music and culture. He was my puff puff and a safe place. We’d talk for hours, falling asleep on the phone—it was a Love and Basketball kind of relationship. He was a sweet man.
It came out eventually. First only peppered in between words of encouragement that soon became way too many sentiments of “your chocolate skin, or “strong thighs”, and “devilish look in your eyes” he mentioned me having when we were making love. RED FLAG. Even this Black man that I loved, saw me as his chocolate devil, despite me being a sweetheart submissive in my signature angelic night gowns and fluffy knit thongs and lingerie. Everywhere it seems my body was being objectified and perceiving a thing to be eaten. In every scenario, I acted in a feral rage. Cursed them and accusing them of this cardinal Black sin. I blocking them and had herbal exorcisms to remove any trace of energy or memories of their bodies on top of mine. But what had they learned from it?
“I fix myself, even when it causes great pain to do so, because I know that I cannot fix the way the world sees me.” ― Tressie McMillan Cottom
While I consider myself pro-hoe, my self-preservation through the act of abstinence has been a way to avoid being eaten altogether. It’s a shame because I love sex and true intimacy. I want partnership and laughter and comfort, but I’m just tired of being eaten.
The Recipe —
‘Kala’ Liberian Puff Puff Drop Donuts
What you need:
2 cups (475ml) warm water
1 packet (7g) active dry yeast
3½ cups (420g) all-purpose flour
½ cup (100g) sugar (or more / less)
¼ tsp nutmeg *optional
¼ tsp rose water *optional
pinch of flaky salt
oil for frying
powdered sugar for dusting
Liberian pepper sauce *optional if eating them traditional Liberian style
What to do:
Activate the Yeas in a medium bowl by combining warm water, yeast, and sugar. Stir gently into the mix and let sit for about 5-10 minutes, until the mixture becomes frothy, when yeast is active.
In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour and salt. Pour in the yeast mixture and stir until you get a sticky (not runny) dough. Cover the bowl with a clean tea towel and let it rest in a warm place for about 1-1.5 hours. The dough should double in size and become light and airy, with small bubbles forming on the surface. A well-risen dough will yield puffs that are soft on the inside and golden on the outside. OMG!
On low to medium heat, add oil in a deep cast iron, or a wide deep pot. The oil should be about 3 inches deep (about 5 cm). PRO-TIP: It's essential the oil reaches the right temperature: if it's too cold, the puff puffs will be greasy and undercooked; too hot, and they might burn before cooking through. To test the oil, drop a small piece of dough into it. If the dough rises quickly to the surface and begins to bubble, the oil is ready. If it sinks, wait for a few more minutes.
Using clean hands or a spoon, grab small amounts of dough (about the size of a golf ball). Carefully drop the dough into the hot oil. Fry in batches—please don't overcrowd the puff as this will also make them hard. Flip them gently after about 2-3 minutes, or when the underside turns golden brown. Fry for an additional 2-3 minutes until both sides are crisp and golden. You’ll know they’re done when they float to the top and are beautifully browned like Halle Berry.
Use a slotted spoon to remove the puff puffs from the oil and set them on a paper towel-lined plate to drain excess oil or a cooking rack if you got it that. Serve immediately while they’re warm, soft, and pillowy—so so good for a non sexual afternoon snack, as a dessert, or with a hot beverage.
Dust the puff puffs with powdered sugar and nutmeg or dip in melted chocolate, or Liberian pepper sauce if you’re feeling spicy.
This was phenomenally written. I’m going to read again and again.
Excellent read👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾