Mapping the Matrilineal

Abstract

This is the first of my analysis chapters. It focuses on the role of the mother and all things maternal in relation to the oral texts collated.

This chapter analyses the method of transmission for recipes and song lyrics within the specific sphere of maternal genealogy. I show the role of the matrilineal voice and how the transmission of knowledge combines with dimensions of female genealogy. Feminist theories, in particular those of Luce Irigaray, show how the female diasporic voice can be heard; I use them to explore the relationship with the maternal voice. It is here that I present a close reading of the recipes and song lyrics and the maternal voice and its links to the location of these voices.

Each of us has a female family tree: we have a mother, a maternal grandmother and great-grandmother, we have daughters…it is easy to forget the special quality of the female genealogy ; we might even come to deny it. Let us try to situate ourselves within that genealogy so that we can win and hold on to our identity .

Luce Irigaray , Sexes and Genealogies (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).