In this dissertation, I will identify and compare the various ways in which food imagery is used in both descriptive and proscriptive ways in the fiction of three Caribbean diasporic women writers in the 1990s--Edwidge Danticat, of Haiti, Gisèle Pineau, of Guadeloupe, and Lakshmi Persaud, of Trinidad. I will examine how these authors treat several aspects of Caribbean identity in the age of migration and exile by writing about food. Those aspects include but are not limited to: evolving gender roles, mother-daughter relationships, and family structures; social injustice both within the Caribbean and also throughout the Caribbean diaspora; Caribbean thinking about the medicinal qualities of food and alternatives to North American or European relationships to food; overturning colonial dichotomies by valorizing the cuisine of oppressed peoples and forming alliances between minority groups through sharing food; and the connections between writing and cooking for Caribbean women. This dissertation will demonstrate that in Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994), Krik? Krak! (1995), and The Farming of Bones (1998) by Edwidge Danticat, in Un Papillon dans la Cité (1992) and L'Exil Selon Julia (1996) by Gisèle Pineau, and in Butterfly in the Wind (1990) and Sastra (1993) by Lakshmi Persaud, the authors use food as a sort of parallel code, sometimes reinforcing and sometimes contradicting the ostensible narrative as it might be understood without this additional input. Reading that code yields a richer and more complete understanding of these fictional works and, by extension, of the cultural phenomena that make up their main themes. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2013. / April 1, 2013. / diaspora, food, globalization, identity, motherhood, post-colonial / Includes bibliographical references. / Martin Munro, Professor Directing Dissertation; Maxine Montgomery, University Representative; Alec Hargreaves, Committee Member; Lisa Wakamiya, Committee Member; Lori Walters, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_253420 |
| Contributors | Cope, Robyn (authoraut), Munro, Martin (professor directing dissertation), Montgomery, Maxine (university representative), Hargreaves, Alec (committee member), Wakamiya, Lisa (committee member), Walters, Lori (committee member), Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics (degree granting department), Florida State University (degree granting institution) |
| Publisher | Florida State University, Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text |
| Format | 1 online resource, computer, application/pdf |
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