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“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.” (Virginia Woolf, Room of One‘s Own)
Food is essential for survival, but not only that: It is a culinary experience that is often connoted with pleasure, eroticism and wealth. In her quote Woolf draws the attention to its significance for the intellect and the functioning of the brain. The power of food can also be observed historically: When Europeans developed a taste for sugar and spice it sent them around the globe resulting in great exploitations such as slave labour and monocropping on plantations in the Caribbean Islands on an industrial scale.
This seminar will focus on the importance of food in recent African and Caribbean literature. We will discuss two novels and some short stories. Students are required to purchase editions of Charmaine Wilkerson’s Black cake (Milton Keynes: Michael Joseph 2022) and Ingrid Persaud’s Love after Love (London: Faber & Faber 2021). |
