DIASPORA AND SITES OF MEMORY: AN APPROACH TO LITERATURE BY IMMIGRANTS IN THE UNITED STATES

Resumo

Today’s world is characterized by transnationalism, an intense flow of people across geographical and cultural boundaries. The transit of subjects is of particular interest to diaspora writers, whose works often portray intercultural relations and explore issues such as dislocation, belonging, and displacement. Such is the context for this article’s contention: that spaces and objects become crucial lieux de mémoire, or sites of memory, in Pierre Nora’s terms, for diaspora writers. Of many possible sites of memory, food is the one that seems more recurrent than others in literary works by diaspora writers. The present article also argues that not only food or dishes, but also the act of cooking itself, as a sort of voluntary mnemonic performance, may constitute a site of memory. As represented through fiction, food and culinary exchange illustrate well what Avtar Brah describes as “diaspora space”, that is, a space that is inhabited both by the immigrant and the native, and where interethnic and intercultural exchanges occur, where the local meets the global. The claims discussed in the article are illustrated with a discussion of the novel Crescent, by Diana Abu-Jaber.