[A Food Memoir]

A simmering project...

A few years ago, I flew from Michigan to Guadeloupe to force-feed dad. I was desperate to keep him alive and to hold on a bit longer to what we had. At the age of eighty-two, dad had abruptly stopped eating. Doctors called it the failure to thrive syndrome. I was familiar with the term from my son who had suffered from an eating disorder since the age of eight months. He had been force-fed in his daycare for some time without my knowledge, and since then, eating had never felt safe for him, except for a handful of dry and crunchy food that he ate on repeat. What I didn’t know is that this kind of anorexia could affect people not only at the beginning, but also at the end of life. As dad lay dying, I held a spoon to his lips, begging him to give me a chance. He kept his lips tight and looked at me with an empty stare, the same stare I had seen many times on my son’s face. With tears falling down my cheeks, sitting on a low stool next to his bed, in the bedroom he used to share with mom, in the house far away from France they built together for their retirement, I started reminiscing about happier times. 

Most of the memories I have of my parents revolve around food, their unusual ways of getting it, cooking it, and eating it. For as long as I can remember, they led a freegan lifestyle, reclaiming the discarded in every aspect of their lives. They themselves were some sort of rejects who found each other, one French Black and the other French White, both a bit odd and marginal. What brought them together is their lack of interest in the lion’s share, all they wanted was to gnaw on the carcass of life. As I put the spoon still full of soup back into the bowl, I thought of the toll it takes to define oneself through food. In my family, the exhaustion of it is a legacy passed down through generations. There was nothing I could do at this point; dad showed no interest in food. He was determined to let himself starve to death to reconnect with mom. 

Living with Dogs

Practices Series, Duke University Press, under contract

I stand still in front of François, letting him methodically retrace the story of my day on my clothes, my purse, my hair, and my breath. His snout is an amazing forensics tool, like a crystal ball but for past events. My dog knows better than anyone else what I did today. He knows where I went, who I talked to, what I ate, and probably even when I last emptied my bladder. 

But what about him? What did he do with his day? 

Dogs don’t live in arrested development. When left alone at home, dogs are not where we think they are, and they are not who we think they are. François plants evidence in the house to remind me that he also had a day. The candy wrappers in the upstairs room licked to disintegration, my son’s misplaced stuffed animal found behind the sofa, those are planted invitations for me to care about his day the same way he cares about mine. François doesn’t fool me. I can feel that the moment I’m out the door, he stops acting like a dog, at least like the image that we humans have of a dog. I know a thing or two about canine truancy. François wants me to talk about his day, I will talk about his day. 

Afro-Dog

Blackness and the Animal Question

Columbia University Press, 2018

The animal-rights organization PETA asked “Are Animals the New Slaves?” in a controversial 2005 fundraising campaign; that same year, after the Humane Society rescued pets in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina while black residents were neglected, some declared that white America cares more about pets than black people. These are but two recent examples of a centuries-long history in which black life has been pitted against animal life. Does comparing human and animal suffering trivialize black pain, or might the intersections of racialization and animalization shed light on interlinked forms of oppression?

See "Media" for podcasts and blogs on this book.

Creole Renegades

Rhetoric of Betrayal and Guilt in the Caribbean Diaspora

The Nicolas Guillen Outstanding Book Award (Caribbean Philosophical Association)

Honorable Mention, Barbara Christian Prize for the Best Book in the Humanities (Caribbean Studies Association)

University Press of Florida, 2014

What is the role of the migrant writer in cultures and histories pressured by the need of cultural remittance? Does the expatriate writer feed or feed off the home country when writing about home miseries? Should racial allegiance be a necessary component of the Creole black diasporic community in America? 

This book investigates the exilic literature of Caribbean-born and Caribbean-descent writers who, from their new location in North America, question their cultural obligation of Caribbeanness, Creoleness, and even Blackness. This new consciousness has led them to challenge their roots as they search for a creative autonomy deemed treacherous by the home community. Though their poetics are infused with an enticing sense of cultural, sexual, or racial emancipation, their deviance is not always defiant. The burden of guilt is one of the defining features of the modern Caribbean diaspora. While untangling the complex rhetoric of cultural debt, betrayal, and guilt at the heart of Caribbean diasporic discourse, Creole Renegades proposes to expose a more human, albeit more flawed and vulnerable, side of the modern Creole subject. 

Voix du monde

Nouvelles francophones

edited with Frieda Ekotto

Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2011

En 1808, avec De la littérature des Nègres, l'abbé Grégoire lançait un appel à une expansion géographique de la littérature de langue française. Depuis lors, comme en témoigne cet ouvrage, la langue française n'a cesse de s'étirer et de s'épanouir mondialement. Quatorze auteurs d'Afrique, des Antilles, d'Amérique et d'Europe ont contribué à ce recueil de nouvelles qui rend hommage à la littérature d'expression française. Ces auteurs se sont rassemblés autour de sujets à la fois communs et singuliers afin de mettre leurs voix multiples en diapason.