Italian Food Identity Analysis

As an Italian-American, I was and am still told by my mother, grandparents, and great-grandparents how proud I should be of my heritage. I was taught to respect my great-grandmother who, after arriving in America along side her husband, fully committed herself to raising her four sons and eight nieces and nephews in a two-bedroom house in Pennsylvania. She was motivated by the drive of a better life in a new, strong country for the young-ones she loved. I was taught to treasure both food and family, praying each night through the Blessed Mother. I was handed Pizzelles and Almond cookies as snacks throughout the day, and listened to Dean Martin through the stereo almost every night. My grandmother’s family came from Mezzogiorno, while my grandfather’s family hailed from the North Country. Though I had never been to Italy, as a child, I still knew the significance of being Italian and was thankful. It was not until I entered public school that I began to understand the teasing that my own ethnic group was subject to on a near daily basis.

Food can partially shape a person's cultural identity. Geeta Kothari explores the cultural nuances between American and Indian food in the essay, “If You Are What You Eat, Then What Am I?” She expresses this through the symbolism of food, growing up and living between two different cultures. Kothari begins her story as a nine-year-old child curiously wanting to eat the same foods as American children: tuna salad sandwiches and hot dogs. She does not have the guidance from her mother regarding American food and culture. Kothari’s mom curbs the curiosity by reluctantly letting her daughter indulge in a can of tuna fish. Kothari describes the open can of tuna fish as “pink and shiny, like an internal organ” and she wondered if it was botulism (947). The way

Cooking and baking is a central quality of this family’s lifestyle. The narrative goes into great detail and this has to do with a cultural placement. For Giovanni’s family, cooking and eating is a set of cultural rituals and the making of an experience. It is a part of a performance art, not just a consumption product. Another central quality of this family’s lifestyle is essentially work. Puma writes:

In Jessica Harris’s “The Culinary Season of my Childhood” she peels away at the layers of how food and a food based atmosphere affected her life in a positive way. Food to her represented an extension of culture along with gatherings of family which built the basis for her cultural identity throughout her life. Harris shares various anecdotes that exemplify how certain memories regarding food as well as the varied characteristics of her cultures’ cuisine left a lasting imprint on how she began to view food and continued to proceeding forward. she stats “My family, like many others long separated from the south, raised me in ways that continued their eating traditions, so now I can head south and sop biscuits in gravy, suck chewy bits of fat from a pigs foot spattered with hot sauce, and yes’m and no’m with the best of ‘em,.” (Pg. 109 Para). Similarly, since I am Jamaican, food remains something that holds high importance in my life due to how my family prepared, flavored, and built a food-based atmosphere. They extended the same traditions from their country of origin within the new society they were thrusted into. The impact of food and how it has factors to comfort, heal, and bring people together holds high relevance in how my self-identity was shaped regarding food.

For many people, culture and identity are closely tied to identity-- sometimes so closely that the things they do, eat, or say may not even feel like a conscious decision. However, from an outsider’s point of view, it is easy to note the differences between cultures in many different ways. One of the most tangible examples of this is, of course, food. When speaking to many people from older generations, it is easy to see how much food is entwined in their stories from the past, whether they come from far away or are still living where they were born. Throughout Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, food is heavily used in many different ways to represent multiple races.

This writing is about her time living in New York. She is a mother and belongs to a poor family. Anna lives in the slums of New York City along with many immigrants who all come from different countries. Anna’s family has experienced many cultural differences collide together to make a mixed culture. Anna herself is a Italian and lives peacefully with many different ethnic people such as Yugoslavians, Spanish people, Japanese people, and more. One example that displays how she lives along with different immigrants is by letting her children eat with them. Anna writes “My children are upstairs in the house next door, having dinner with the Ecuadorian family that lives on the top floor” (Quindlen 1). Anna letting her kids eat with a different ethnic family shows that she is fine with her kids assimilating into a different culture. Another instance of a cultural mix is shown when people buy squid. Quindlen writes, “About a third of the people in the neighborhood think of squid is calamari, about a third think of it as sushi and about a third think of it as bait” (Quindlen 1). This sentence displays that people from different countries arrive to America and share different ideologies. For instance, Japanese people will use squid for sushi. In contrast, Italians will use squid to make calamari. Only people from different ethnic backgrounds will have differing values and traditions. If only Americans lived in this

Growing up in a small town has the advantage of being a close-knit community, unfortunately this also meant that exposure to foreign delicacies is not a common occurrence. As a child, I developed a strong dislike for any foods that I viewed as abnormal, and became quite a finicky eater. Thus, my familiarity with Italian food is somewhat limited to restaurant dishes, and recipes that friends exuberantly claim to be a crime if not made. While being a student in Victoria, I have had the opportunity to live in various different areas, some of which were next door to outdoor markets. Much like the markets described by Braimbridge et al.,(2005) in The Food of Italy, the bread was baked fresh daily, the produce fresh and locally

In The Culinary Seasons of my Childhood, Jessica B. Harris- the author- attempts to help readers understand the relationship between food and identity. Harris gave a detailed, but relevant, description of how how food portrayed different cultures in her life and how it taught her many lessons about her family history and who she is; she also described how food brings people together as one and creates a connection that nothing else can. The author helps readers initially understand her ideas by showing examples of how food, even in the same culture, can reflect different social classes.“ Even though chitterlings might be on the menu, they could equally likely be accompanied by a mason jar of corn liquor or a crystal goblet of champagne”( Harris

This week materials are mainly focusing on food. The readings are about how food, especially dinner, has an important role in the family, how the way we live affects the way we eat and the regional of our food. As in Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, he was explaining how corn is in all of our diets. How it moved from the farm to the feeding lot, to the food lab and into our food. Further analysis of food, and of the sources that describes the food we eat, suggests that it requires a lot of work in the agriculture farm before our ingredients can come together and that mealtime is a great time for a family bonding but the bonding varies with each family due to the different in every families’ culture.

Spending much of her childhood in the German Coast of Acadiana, Darleen Jenkins holds on tightly to her family traditions. Moving from Luling to Houma, down to Dularge and back up to Houma again, she has been able to spot differences in the regions’ foods based on both time and place. She reminisces fondly of times when her family came together to share in meals and memories. Speaking with her one couldn’t help but to want to hear more about her childhood and transitions through adulthood.

She compares multiple food analogies that all express this common theme, such as the tossed salad, which implies that “Ingredients are encouraged to retain their cultural identities, thus retaining their integrity and flavor while contributing to a tasty and nutritious salad” (4). A more well known analogy, the melting pot, states, “the ingredients in the pot are combined so as to lose their discrete identities and yield a final product of uniform consistency and flavor” (“Melting Pot”). A compromise between the two, the ethnic stew, allows for some unified culture but still permits the ingredients in the stew to retain their cultural identities. Gloor notes that all of these models have something in common, “Each ingredient is important and the final product would not be the same if some distinct ingredient were missing”

When considering food as a part of my identity, there are multiple components that make up who I am. It is a mix of family heritage, experiences, and personal preferences, which all culminate together to form my food identity. While some might see their food identity as one culture, concept, or idea, I see my food identity as a variety. This variety consists of what foods I like and the memories associated with them. Specifically, my memories and experiences with my family have contributed to what I believe to be my food identity.

Mn: Food’s Memory Connections Kim Thy's Mn explores how personal and collective memories influence food's significance to individuals. Mn moved to Canada to live with her husband and became the chef at his Montreal restaurant where she created dishes that "tasted" (Thy, 35) like home back in Vietnam. Thy incorporates the relationship between memories and food as a thematic element and displays how memories influence the realistic element of how food is more than just Mn’s career. Reminiscing on past experiences such as cooking with her mother and the significance of various spices illustrates the familiarity and cultural implications food has on memory.

This paper will discuss the multifaceted relationships among food, and culture. I will be looking at the relationships people have with food, and explore how this relationship reveals information about them. Their food choices of individuals and groups, can reveal their ideals, likes and dislikes. Food choices tell the stories of where people have travelled and who they have met along the way.

It’s no doubt that Americans would like to be a part of such a wonderful culture. In the United States of America, Italian food makes up a large percentage of the food market. But, there is a difference between Italian food, Italian American food, and plain old food pretending to be Italian. So what are Americans eating? Is it “authentic?” This paper will cover what authentic really means to Italian food, how Italian American culture is different than traditional Italian culture, and ultimately how these differences and the exploitation of Italian American culture has led to the American public’s mislead view of what is Italian.