Navigating the Religious in the Cosmopolitan

Sweetness in the Belly (2005) explores a new space which problematizes the intersections between religion, cosmopolitanism, and displacement. Camilla Gibb employs the trope of the journey to trace the ways in which the female protagonist, Lilly, transforms in a transnational context. The narrative depicts multiple journeys that Lilly undertakes between the West and the East. Such geographical displacements are pivotal to her complex spiritual self-discovery. Lilly, a white Ethiopian Muslim, embraces Sufi Islam which helps her resist forms of alienation and discrimination. Therefore, as I argue in this paper, religion can be a constitutive component in the formation of female cosmopolitan subjectivity. Understanding cosmopolitanism as a disposition that is not necessarily secular in its orientation, this article investigates the transformative role of religion in the debates surrounding “new cosmopolitanism.” I argue that through Lilly’s journey, the narrative depicts religion as a central feature of cosmopolitan identity which disrupts the orientalist bent associated with East/West dichotomies.