We are What WeNowEat: Food and Identity in the Cuban Diaspora

Abstract This article discusses language ideologies in relation to political ideologies in the Cuban diaspora in the United States. The findings of three longitudinal attitude studies, two conducted using the methods of perceptual dialectology, and a third with the matched-guise method, indicated that the diaspora’s political beliefs have a robust effect on its beliefs about Cuban Spanish in the diaspora and in the homeland. The perceptions studies showed that the national variety has a high degree of prestige in the diaspora, and that it has very low prestige in Cuba. The results of the matched-guise test showed that participants were unable to differentiate voices recorded in the 1960s and the 1990s, and that social information about residence in Cuba or the diaspora was more important to judgments of correctness than the presence of nonstandard variants. It is argued that the diaspora’s language ideology is maintained through erasure and essentialization: social and linguistic facts are erased, and the homeland is racially essentialized. It is suggested that through its language ideology, the Cuban diaspora claims authenticity and legitimacy vis-à-vis the homeland.

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Writing Conflict to End Conflict: Reconciliatory Writing in Cristina García’s "Dreaming in Cuban," "The Agüero Sisters," and "King of Cuba"

REDEN. Revista Española de Estudios Norteamericanos ◽

10.37536/reden.2019.1.1375 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 95-116

Author(s):

Inger Pettersson

Keyword(s):

Diplomatic Relations ◽

Dreaming In Cuban ◽

Cuban Diaspora ◽

The Us ◽

Long Time ◽

The Relationship

The building of bridges between Cuba and the US has been ongoing for a long time, not least by artists. Reconciliation work preceding the commencement of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the US encompasses, for example, novelist Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban (1992), The Agüero Sisters (1997), and King of Cuba (2013). I argue that these novels take on the task of lessening polarizations with the aspiration of furthering reconciliation processes through concentrating on the divisiveness between families and politics within the Cuban communities, focusing on the island Cubans and the US Cuban diaspora. García writes conflict to end conflict and this is, I claim, her strongest contribution to the reconciliation processes. In the last part of the article I briefly discuss how I use the concept of translation to theorize the relationship between fiction and reality.

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THE TASTE OF HOME: THE CONSTRUCTION OF SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS THROUGH COMMENSALITY AMONGST FEMALE MALAY STUDENTS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

Journal of Nusantara Studies (JONUS) ◽

10.24200/jonus.vol7iss1pp316-334 ◽

2022 ◽

Vol 7 (1) ◽

pp. 316-334

Author(s):

Ireena Nasiha Ibnu

Keyword(s):

United Kingdom ◽

International Students ◽

Social Relationships ◽

Participant Observation ◽

Postgraduate Students ◽

Migrant Communities ◽

The United Kingdom ◽

Food And Identity ◽

And Migration ◽

Depth Interviews

Background and Purpose: Commensality is an act of eating together among migrant communities as a means of passing down the culture and ethnic identity. There is very limited discussion on commensality that pays attention to food sharing and eating that extends beyond the traditional forms of social relationships, identity, and space among the Malay community abroad. Thus, this article aims to explore the connections of social relationships through food, space and identity amongst female Malay students in the United Kingdom. Methodology: This research is based on one-year ethnographic fieldwork amongst female Malaysian Muslim students in Manchester and Cardiff. Thirty in-depth interviews were conducted with both undergraduate and postgraduate students from sciences and social sciences courses. Besides, in-depth interviews, participant observation, conversation and fieldnotes methods were deployed as supplementary for data collection. Findings: This paper argues that cooking and eating together in a private space is a way for them to maintain social relationships and overcome stress in their studies, and fulfil their desire to create harmony and trust at home. Besides, places such as the kitchen, play an essential space in building the Malay identity and social relationships between female Malay students’ communities in the host country. Contributions: This study has contributed to an understanding of the meaning of friendship, identity, space, and the discussion on the anthropology of food from international students’ perspectives and migration studies. Keywords: Food and identity, commensality, Malay students, friendship, international students. Cite as: Ibnu, I. N. (2022). The taste of home: The construction of social relationships through commensality amongst female Malay students in the United Kingdom. Journal of Nusantara Studies, 7(1), 316-334. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol7iss1pp316-334

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‘Asking for another’ online: Membership categorization and identity construction on a food and nutrition discussion board

Discourse Studies ◽

10.1177/1461445617701810 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 19 (3) ◽

pp. 253-271 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Cynthia Gordon ◽

Didem İkizoğlu

Keyword(s):

Identity Construction ◽

Extreme Case ◽

Discussion Board ◽

Cultural Ideologies ◽

Membership Categorization ◽

Food And Nutrition ◽

Health Advice ◽

Health Related ◽

Mother Figure ◽

Food And Identity

This discourse analytic study integrates theories of stance and membership categorization to investigate one online discussion thread initiated by a woman who asks for diet and health advice on behalf of her boyfriend, an interactive move we term ‘asking for another’. Posters to the thread, in relatively explicit ways, construe the original poster as a ‘nag’ and ‘mother-figure’ and her boyfriend as a ‘victim of nagging’ and ‘childish’. Our analysis illuminates how two features of the asking-for-another post (inadvertently) evoke these identities: (1) extreme case formulations, created via adjectives and adverbs, lead others to view the woman as inappropriately involved and controlling and her boyfriend as immature, and (2) details about the boyfriend’s diet, provided via nouns and adjectives, index cultural ideologies of food and identity. This study illuminates the ambiguity and polysemy of the move of asking for another, contributing to research on identity construction and health-related advice-seeking online.

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