Abstract
Through the analysis of The settler’s cookbook: A memoir of love, migration and food (Alibhai-Brown 2009), Parmar excavates forms of cultural identity and memory amongst the South Asian East African community in Britain. By scrutinising the dual genre of the cookbook memoir, she first engages autobiography theory, exploring the paradoxical nature of the autobiographical genre. Subsequently, discourses of trauma emerge, in relation to both racism and dislocation. Through an established body of trauma scholarship (Gilmore 2001; Caruth 1995, 1996), as well as recent theoretical redirections that take account of issues of globalisation and postcolonialism (Buelens et al. 2014; Craps 2013), Parmar sheds light on how this trauma manifests itself, and how it can be managed, particularly via the cookbook genre and culinary practices. She argues that we must shape new ways of thinking about diasporic loss. Turning to Alibhai Brown’s one-woman play Nowhere to belong, Parmar nuances her commentary on cultural identity amongst the double diaspora.
Women have conserved a whole world, past and present, in the idiom of food. […] women have given history and memory a permanent lodging. The knowledge contained in cookbooks transcends generations.
(Theophano 2002, 49)
And my chutneys and kasaundies are, after all, connected to my nocturnal scribblings—by day amongst the pickle-vats, by night within these sheets, I spend my time at the great work of preserving. Memory, as well as fruit, is being saved from the corruption of the clocks.
(Rushdie 1982, 38)
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Notes
- 1.
The term ‘gastropoetics’ was coined by Parama Roy (2002, 2010). Through the term Roy closely interprets diasporic and migrant narratives that have an emphasis on rituals of consumption and culinary practices. Anita Mannur (2010) and Ben Highmore (2013) have subsequently proliferated the use of ‘gastropoetics’ in food-centred literary criticism. I respectfully deploy the term in this chapter, and in the title to this chapter, following in an established tradition of analysing the significance of ‘culinary texts’ within the diaspora.
- 2.
See Introduction, as well as scholarship on the Indian in East Africa by Bhachu (1985), Bhana and Pachai (1984), Ghai and Ghai (1971).
- 3.
Yagoda (2009) and Couser (2012), amongst other recent scholarship, make clear the rise in popularity of the autobiographical form. Yagoda provides a historical account of the genre, which is thorough and clear. The critic also delineates some reasons for the ‘memoir boom’ (238–9). Couser takes an interest in the relationship between the novel and the memoir, and early on in his text seeks to clarify any confusion between the two genres.
- 4.
Yagoda (2009). There are further complications and confusions with the demarcation between the autobiography and memoir. In recognising the etymology of ‘memoir’, Yagoda continues by suggesting that memoirs, in the plural, are synonymous with autobiography. Thus he adds a new dimension to the memoir/autobiography definition, which creates some inconsistency in the general understanding of these terms.
- 5.
See Eakin (2008, 20) for a discussion of the controversy over Menchú’s text, as well as other works, that have not weathered the criticism so well, such as James Frey’s memoir A million little pieces. Yagoda (2009, 7, 269–70) too discusses the reception of these texts, as does Couser (2012, 17). Couser underlines the value memoir has as ‘literary property’, and how framing one’s work within this genre can be the key to publishing success.
- 6.
The idea of ‘truth’ underpins this foregrounding section. The concept of objective truth itself has been further examined and problematised by various theorists. See Yagoda (2009, 170–1) for a brief delineation of some of these ideas.
- 7.
See Stanley (1992, 62) for reflections on the inevitable limitations of memory when writing autobiography.
- 8.
Examples from The settler’s cookbook include Alibhai-Brown forgetting an edible resin she would chew in mosque that an old auntie remembers so vividly (8), the author’s remembrance of fresh meat in Kampala (27) and Uganda being ‘improbably lush’ (42).
- 9.
I am compelled to include a note here pertaining to the racism encountered by black Africans in East Africa. This prejudice was prolific and dealt out by all sections of society. Both South Asian and white settlers adopted a standard practice of subjugating Africans, and, as Alibhai-Brown points out, these attitudes often remain endemic within twice-migrant South Asian communities.
- 10.
See Chap. 4 for a discussion of gendered violence during partition.
- 11.
See Iser (1978) for an established literary discussion of the relation between the reader and text, the process of reading and the aesthetic response.
- 12.
Miller (2002) also recognises this relationship between reader and writer.
- 13.
In reference to memoir, the relationship formed between author and reader, I would argue, also challenges poststructuralist theory such as Barthes’ ‘Death of the Author’ (1967), because the importance of the author cannot be overlooked.
- 14.
Alibhai-Brown (2009, 13) moves quickly, and unsettlingly, between the slave heritage of black Americans to the displacement of Scottish and Irish white Americans, drawing a comparison with the Indian East African legacy.
- 15.
I would argue nor does it create a ‘continual reconstruction’ (Rothberg 2009, 5) of these memories ‘through their entanglement’ (313). This is where my application of Rothberg in this work diverges. I simply deploy Holocaust scholarship to illuminate a narrative of displacement.
- 16.
Whilst Theophano’s argument creates an absence in culinary discourse where men are concerned, throughout her text, Eat my words (2002), an intimate relationship between women and culinary practices is drawn. Further, for a brief discussion of the relationship between food and female writers see both Kadar (2005, 98) and Leonardi (1989, 343).
- 17.
See Cotter (1997) for further exploration of the relationship between recipe writing and language.
- 18.
Terms associated with performance, such as performative and performativity, have been coined by various scholars, including in early seminal work by J. L. Austin (1962). Significant to this discussion is also Judith Butler’s more recent Gender trouble (1990), which suggests gendered identity is performative and proliferated culturally to fashion masculine and feminine individuality.
- 19.
Ong (2002) in particular explores the qualities of oral and print or written culture, in effect framing the two forms as binaries.
- 20.
Indeed, the concept that there are ‘other ways of knowing’ has proliferated elsewhere within postcolonial discourse. For example, Brodber’s Myal: A novel (1988) invests in telling ‘the half [that] has never been told’, through both its vernacular style and content.
- 21.
See Chakrabarty, who has propelled this type of thought, in Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial thought and historical difference (2008).
- 22.
Despite common belief, the origins of English ‘fish and chips’ lie in Irish, French and Jewish cooking. See Panayi (2008, 16–19).
- 23.
Buettner (877) notes the accusation of lack of assimilation, and later explores the role curry has played in Bradford’s cultural scene, where the dish been accredited Northern authenticity alongside Yorkshire institutions such as the Dales and the Brontë sisters’ home in Haworth (887).
- 24.
For scholarship on Indian restaurants in Britain, see Tönnies (2001) and Hardyment (1995).
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Parmar, M. (2019). The Gastropoetics of The Settler’s Cookbook: Diasporic Trauma and Embodied Narratives. In: Reading Cultural Representations of the Double Diaspora. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18083-6_2
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