Culinary Diasporas

Abstract

This chapter represents another dimension of diaspora and migration. It focuses on the wounds borne by Caribbean and North African communities in France and the efforts made by diasporic women to claim subjectivity through the cultural politics of food. Charting the migrating routes of food and spices, Gisèle Pineau’s novels—Un Papillon dans la citéand L’Exil selon Julia—highlight die historicity of food and the possibility of creating diasporic solidarities within and beyond the Caribbean. Caribbean cuisine offers an astounding variety of local and regionally defined dishes that incorporate a multitude of cooking styles and ingredients. Ranging from the indigenous Arawak techniques of barbacoa (barbecue) to the African-inspired use of root crops such as yam and taro, beans like pigeon peas, and vegetables, including a form of collard green named callaloo, plantains, and okra, or gombo, this cuisine also reflects the colonial influences of delicately-flavored sauces and poaching or court bouillon. Caribbean cuisine has also distinguished itself by the use of East Indian spices found in curried meats such as Colombo cabri (curried goat) as well as breads such as rotis and paratas, while simultaneously highlighting the Chinese contributions of spiced noodle dishes, or mein, and the Middle Eastern staple of couscous. A product of die blending of cultural influences from Africa, Asia, and Europe with indigenous culinary practices, Caribbean food demonstrates its truly transnational scope.

Food is both a highly condensed social fact and a marvelously plastic kind of collective representation with the capacity to mobilize strong emotions

Arjun Appadurai, “Gastro-politics in Hindu South Asia”¹