Difficult Diasporas. Samantha Pinto

      devour sugar-studded non-

      pareils, pale taffy, damask plums. (1990, 4)

      This list could continue: a family, a home, an understanding of material, of color, of food. The “small things in this world” are not, of course, for the speaking subject but are part of an unfulfilled narrative of reciprocal desire for cosmopolitan legitimacy (4). Such desire for ownership, these references to commodity culture and the good life, shifts the raced and gendered paradigm by making everything cosmopolitan. This Venus Hottentot assesses not only her given name but those of her sideshow “neighbors,” her own animal-like presentation, as well as her “planet”-ary status (5). Baartman is large, in Elizabeth Alexander’s text; she is her own world, her own system of reference, even as she is limited by another set of meanings.