Diasporic culinary trajectories: Mapping food zones and food routes in first-generation South Asian and Caribbean culinary memoirs

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article examines two culinary memoirs that belong to two distinct postcolonial diasporas, the Caribbean, through a focus on Austin Clarke’s Pig Tails ‘n’ Breadfruit, and the South Asian diaspora, through a focus on Madhur Jaffrey’s Climbing the Mango Trees. As a South Asian diasporan, Jaffrey maps Delhi as a multicultural, pluri-faith town, with distinct (food) areas, to reflect contemporary views of the nation as diversity/unity, and define herself as a Muslim-Hindu hybrid. Austin Clarke maps food circulation within and from the Caribbean as a way to address the issues of human (forced) migrations and highlight continuity in the colonial logics of exploitation. By refusing to trace food routes to Africa, Clarke draws attention to native resistance and culinary and linguistic resilience. One memoir (Jaffrey) chooses métissage, the other (Clarke) creolization. Both illustrate how the culinary memoir engages the reader by offering an ethics of eating and cooking together.