Summary Of The Binary Season Of My Childhood

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

Ruth Tam's article, "How It Feels When White People Shame Your Culture's Food- Then Make It Trendy" (2015) effectively demonstrates the extent to which how immigrants feel when their traditional foods become the scorn of white people through telling personal narratives, and using of primary sources as evidence.

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.

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.

Moreover, Ferris talks about how throughout the history of the south, the politics of power and place, have lead to the establishment of a cuisine that includes both privilege and deprivation. Thus, continuously impacting the food patterns of the modern day south. Ferris states, “In food lies the harsh dynamics of racism, sexism, class struggle, and ecological exploitation that have long defined the south; yet there, too, resides family, a strong connection to place, conviviality, creativity, and flavor” (Edible South, 1) . This is exemplified all throughout the text by many accounts of antebellum cuisine influenced by that of African and Native Americans.

Indeed, Pollan’s views appear to be convincing since the different cultures in America offering a large variety of traditional food dishes causes a problem in food choices. As a consequence, Pollan mentioned, the mindset of American’s about, “what should we eat for dinner?” is caused by the food options in America being very diverse and not limited.

My earliest memory of food is lentils and rice cooked in a pressure cooker. Lentils were cooked at least three days a week. Other days we had different vegetable curries, curd and more rice. This was what I took to school as my lunch every day. As I grew older and started caring more about my social life and people around me, I started noticing what my classmates brought for lunch from their homes. I started understanding how food reflected different cultures and communities. One day, in our

Four different people, four different lifestyles, all with at least one thing in common—their races (or so we have yet to discover). I began my interviews wanting to show the similarities and differences in eating habits and traditions with the African American perspective in mind. Although race is used as the combining factor in this situation, each individual’s lifestyle, cultural behavior, and even eating habits are all very unique. My interviewees consisted of four Americans, as mentioned before all of same race, with similar yet very distinct backgrounds. They range from a black Jew, to a “Jamerican,” to what I would call a “traditional southerner”, right on down to a modern day Muslim.

I feel comfortable talking about my favorite ethnic foods such as fish ‘n chips just about anywhere. Although the diverse ethnic diets of the American people do not always reflect my own, I, as well as others must be accepting of different ethnic diets. The acceptance and acknowledgement of different and diverse diets shaped by ethnic culture enables me to be comfortable talking about and eating my own distinctive foods, regardless of where I

Peru is different than other Latin American countries because of its immense diversity. Immigrants from all different origins, come together and contribute something special to the original Peruvian culture and cuisine. In Peru, each group of people is different. However, when they arrive in the United States, they are seen as Peruvian. These Peruvians are identified by their country, rather than what region they come from. When they come to America the fear and anxiety of assimilating to a foreign country is eased by the diverse individuals coming together with familiar foods from their shared homeland. At the same time, their food is able to bring a new flavor to mainland culture and American society.

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.

Culture not only helps to determine what foods we eat, but it also influences when we eat (for example, one, three, or five meals and at what time of the day); with whom we eat (that is, only with the same sex, with children or with the extended family); how we eat (for example, at a table or on the floor; with chopsticks, silverware, or the fingers); and the ritual of eating (for example, in

Summary Paragraph: One of the many issues that international students face is coping with American food. With food being linked to culture, international students must face one of the hardest tasks when coming to America, eating someone else’s culture while neglecting their own. In this research project, I will investigate how international students cope with eating American cuisine or what measures they take to avoid it.

When you ask people what the first word that comes to mind when they think of diversity, they usually reply with “race,” “socioeconomic status,” or other demographic elements. Diversity entails a multitude of factors, yet can also be connected to the individual experience. Growing up, my identity has been strongly tied to my upbringing in an Italian household with my father, mother, and brother. Considering my father’s parents emigrated from Liguria, the birthplace of pesto, growing basil allowed us to maintain a connection with our heritage. As a child, I remember playing in my backyard with my brother, careful to not roll the ball in the dirt where the basil was growing. That would ruin the fun of picking it with my dad and making it with my mom. Yet, the truly satisfying aspect of this tradition was sitting down as a family and sharing a meal complete with numerous anecdotes.