Abstracts Womens Studies

Recipes and songs as tools for solidarity: Women's oral texts, diaspora and communal identity

by Razia Parveen

This thesis centres on how recipes and songs can generate an identity for a community in relocation. I focus upon the South Asian community in Lockwood, West Yorkshire, and show how cultural practices have migrated and relocated from the homeland to the diaspora. I read these oral texts as literature, which allows them to be heard outside the domestic arena. Following an oral history methodology, this ethnographical study focuses on three areas of significance: the matrilineal, nostalgia, and space. Each of these themes has been used to reveal how diasporic identity is attained and maintained through recipes and songs. I illustrate how the dynamics of a particular type of nostalgia, which I have termed as migrational nostalgia, allows a community in diaspora to flourish. The concept of space and time is revealed as complex and becomes multi layered when discussing a diasporic community. I have drawn upon the works of Julia Kristeva and Homi Bhabha, in particular, to analyze these narratives and position them within a liminal space. I further question what it means for a cultural practice to be legitimate and explore the idea that ultimately for those in diasporic communities authenticity can be found in the maternal voice. I show that the validation for a dish or a song is sought after in relocation and this is sustained by transmitting the oral texts through dimensions of maternal genealogy. All of these factors culminate in a unique identity for a diasporic group, which has its foundations in an alternative space and time.