ABSTRACT
Following up on the departure of the main character in Chris Abani's novel, GraceLand, this chapter looks at the centrality of food culture to those living in exile. M. G. Vassanji's novel, No New Land, centers on Nurudin and Zera Lalani, and their children, Fatima and Hanif. The attention to regional foodways and foods is reflected in three of Samuelsson's cookbooks, Aquavit, The Soul of a New Cuisine: A Discovery of the Foods and Flavors of Africa, and New American Table. That the recipes in each of those cookbooks also reveal the history of colonialism should not be surprising. The rise of Aline Sitoé, or Alinesitoué, as a prophet and revolutionary leader coincided with the severe shortages of food across French West Africa, documented by Ousmane Sembéne, in Les bouts de bois de Dieu. Colonialism and its accompanying export economy shattered this connection between the people and the land turning it from home into resource, with no regard to sustainability.
