A Taste of Humbleness: Food Practices and Co-creation with LGBTQI+ Forced Migrants in Johannesburg

In this chapter, we analyse a collaboration between engaged scholars and LGBTQI+ forced migrants in Johannesburg, mediated by food practices. We focus on the Chakalaka Sessions, a series of brunch gatherings co-created by Thomars Shamuyarira, director of the forced migrant-led NGO The Fruit Basket, and researchers Miriam Ocadiz and Phoebe Kisubi Mbasalaki. The initiative aimed to enhance wellbeing, both individually and collectively, by nurturing a sense of connectedness and community. Based on these encounters, we theorise the intersection of care and knowledge by elaborating on the pedagogy of craving and the methodology of nourishment—frameworks that approach cooking and sharing food as processes of knowledge-making. As participants’ bodies experienced food through emotions such as joy, pleasure, and nostalgia, eating and cooking became processes of (self-)discovery and exploration that enabled LGBTQI+ forced migrants to reflect on their lived realities. We thus demonstrate how food, similarly to art, can be approached as a creative form of expression and representation, with the potential to unsettle power dynamics in knowledge production.