Rosalind’s Reviews > The Book of Difficult Fruit: Arguments for the Tart, Tender, and Unruly > Status Update

V - Vanilla
(Yes I read all the other letters and just didn’t post about them) A meditation on performing femininity in terms of the girlish teenage vanilla scent, specifically the one from Bath & Body Works (we all know the one). I never wanted to be that girly. I wanted to be tough, and stoic, and capable, much like the girls in my favorite books. But I still love a slinky dress and vanilla - best beware of boxes

S - Sugarcane
I would love to see Kara Walker’s work - The Marvelous Sugar Baby sounds like an amazing piece that truly captured the horror and blood and life tat went into the sugar industry in the Caribbean

R - Rhubarb

I knew that rhubarb leaves are poisonous and bad to eat, but what I learned here is that rhubarb’s roots are a powerful purgative or alternatively a cure for diarrhea. What a powerful plant.

Q - Quince
Thought by many Jewish scholars to be the fruit of good and evil from the Garden of Eden, as it has a strong, rosy, perfumed fragrance but an extremely astringent and sour taste. It also has so much natural pectin in it that people would make hair pomade (an early hair gel) from the excretions of its seeds in water, in high demand by hairdressers.

P - Pomegranate
Considered a fertility helper by the ancients, but in reality inhibited it.

Osage orange - I first saw one of these “monkey brains” in Prospect Park and found it terrifying yet awesome. Who could have guessed that nature makes Frankenstein’s brain? I learned here that they are inedible, good for nothing, and that Martha Stewart thinks they’re cute. I think she needs to get her eyes checked.

N - Norton Grape
The only wine grape native to America. Useful recipes too (how to make red wine vinegar? Yes please)

N - Norton Grape
The only wine grape native to America. Useful recipes too (how to make red wine vinegar? Yes please)

M - Medlar
This fruit is only ripe once it’s rotten and was a Shakespearean term for slut. I think that’s enough.

L - Lump
This is a chapter not about a fruit of the vine but a fruit of the body, as the author typifies it - cancer. The body ripening in a way it is not supposed to. She writes of a friend whose 2 year tumor was at first mistaken by the student health center as a pregnancy, and her own cancer scare felt like a blueberry tight beneath the skin. Thoughtful and kind.