Taste and Sentiment: Cartographies of Afropean Affiliation in Leonora Miano’s Soulfood Équatoriale (2009)¹

Abstract

Through a study of Soulfood Équatoriale (2009), a nostalgic collection of culinary short stories by Paris-based Cameroonian writer Leonora Miano (1973–), and her essay “Afropea” (Miano, Écrits pour la parole), this article relates culinary literary form to the AfroEuropean subjectivities. Located in the emergent field of foodways, the article examines the juxtaposition “Soulfood” as a signifier of histories of Afrodiasporic dispersal and African-American culinary tradition, with “Équatoriale” denoting the author’s personal trajectory from Cameroon to becoming a naturalized French citizen or AfroEuropean. Using the dual notions of taste and nostalgia to interrogate the affective multiple affiliation created by the translocation of soul food to the Francophone Afropean space, the article frames a nascent Afropean culinary culture as a site of subjectivation created by an entangled network of cultural roots and routes, which transcend cultural and linguistic borders.

Keywords:

• Leonora Miano
• AfroEurope
• foodways
• Culinary Literature
• slavery

Notes

Notes

1 This article was first presented as a paper at the International Comparative Association Conference (2015) through the support of the National Research Foundation's Knowledge Interchange & Collaboration Grant awarded while at the University of Pretoria.

2 Anderson, Jay Allan. The Study of Contemporary Foodways in American Folklife Research. Point Park College, 1971.

3 Civitello, Linda. Cuisine and Culture: A History of Food and People. John Wiley & Sons, 2011.

4 Counihan, Carole, and Penny Van Esterik. Food and Culture: A Reader. Routledge, 2013.

5 Gikandi, Simon. “Between Slavery and Taste: A Response.” Research in African Literatures, vol. 45, no. 4, 2014, pp. 29–32, doi:10.2979/reseafrilite.45.4.29.

6 Glissant, Edouard. Poétique de la Relation: Poétique III. Paris, Gallimard, 1990.

7 Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. Capitalisme et Schizophrénie 2: Milles Plateaux. Paris, Les Éditions de Minuit, coll. “Critique,” 1980.

8 Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. Psychology P, 1994.

Additional information

Notes on contributor

Polo Belina Moji is currently a senior lecturer in English literature at the University of Cape Town (South Africa). Formerly a lecturer of French and Francophone Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pretoria, she holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the Université de Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris III, France). Her research interests are feminist and cultural studies, critical race theory, and comparative (Anglophone/Francophone) African literature. Her current research focuses on Francophone Afro-European literary and cultural production.