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

TL;DRAbstract

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 narra

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