YWCA of the City of New York

“You are able to be skilled in the kitchen and in the Great Hall,” says Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, quoting her beloved aunt, who believed that her niece could achieve success in her domestic endeavors and in her career. Women’s empowerment, in all its forms, is the driving force behind Tan’s new food memoir, A Tiger in the Kitchen, and on February 2, the YWCA of the City of New York partnered with Voice, an imprint of Hyperion, to celebrate her accomplishments and sample recipes from her book. At Café Asean, a skilled chef prepared dishes like the crunchy popiah and the flaky pineapple tarts for dozens of YW supporters, while Tan outlined the impetus behind her culinary project.

The author started out as an outspoken girl in Singapore whose grandmother often bemoaned her granddaughter’s tendency to choose reading over cooking. Tan eventually moved to the U.S. to attend Northwestern University and pursue a career in journalism. After establishing her career as a noted food and fashion writer, she decided to explore her Singaporean family heritage by mastering her aunts’ and grandmother’s shared passion — cooking. The time spent learning to prepare traditional dishes allowed her to both value her own cultural roots and publish her first book.

This approach encapsulates the often-overlooked truth that women’s empowerment can take many forms, from becoming a published writer to keeping a family’s culinary traditions alive. This lesson resonates with the realities of the lives of the women that the YW serves — women who balance their careers with their domestic responsibilities every day. As they know, working women needn’t renounce their traditional roles to fit in with the contemporary model of empowerment; rather, it is the very notion that women must prioritize a career over caring for their families and celebrating their roots that has become antiquated. Cheryl Tan proves that women can redefine womanhood on their own terms, marry their work skills to the traditional practices of their communities and hone their skills in the kitchen and in the Great Hall.

February 8, 2011