Edible Encounters and the Formation of Self in Baltasar Lopes' Chiquinho and Paulina Chiziane's Niketche: uma história de poligamia

Abstract

Food tropes remain potent literary devices to both dissimulate political critique and revitalize individual agency. In what follows, we propose a comparative analysis of Baltasar Lopes’ Chiquinho and Paulina Chiziane’s Niketche: uma história de poligamia that examines their respective literary use of food. Through food tropes both authors navigate their respective worlds of change where scarcity and abundance coexist as constant reminders that sustenance is not merely a part of their modern realities, but fully embedded into their search for self-fulfillment and self-realization. Through this scope, it is argued that food tropes allow the authors to unmask the fractures within colonial and post-colonial modalities of oppression. Lastly, we ultimately suggest that food tropes provide a space in which characters embark on a return journey to “wholeness” and self-liberation.This article is published under a CC-BY license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Keywords

• (Post)colonial Identity Politics
• Food
• Fragmentation
• Famine
• Culinary Traditions