Like Amanda, I’d love to talk about the value to us of certain dishes and food in general. Specifically, I’d like to discuss the cultural meaning of food, and how we navigate this in the midst of our challenging “melting pot” country.
*Note: The two things I want you to watch/read are Jennifer 8. Lee’s talk and Yasmin Khan’s article. The rest of the embedded links are just for your reference—you don’t have to read them unless you want. Also, please don’t feel pressured to answer all the bolded questions in your blog post, as long as you think about them for Thursday’s discussion!
First of all if you didn’t answer this in Amanda’s post, do you have any dishes/foods that are special to your culture?
Next, please watch the following Ted Talk by Jennifer 8. Lee, who was a producer for the documentary The Search for General Tso: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6MhV5Rn63M (watch at least until 11:24)
The reason I wanted you to watch Lee’s Ted Talk is to show how ideas from one person can be copied, altered, and propagated across an entire system—as seen in fortune cookies, chop suey, kung pao chicken, and the various versions of Chinese food around the world. It also highlights the way food can be used by a dominant social class to exotify and other-ize other groups.
Also, please read this short article by Yasmin Khan: https://www.chefsfeed.com/stories/830-what-being-mixed-race-taught-me-about-cultural-appropriation-in-food
Khan describes how portraying food from immigrant communities as dirty/strange works to perpetuate xenophobia and racism. Yet certain “ethnic” foods and even cuisines have become trendy, popular, and in demand (think phở, 寿司 sushi, 김치 kimchi, Filipino food, etc), but often not to the benefit of the communities from which they originate (https://theoutline.com/post/1584/ethnic-food-trends-jamaican-patties?zd=1&zi=tfysc22b).
Do you have any initial thoughts about Lee’s talk or Khan’s article?
While I am excited to see people be more open to different flavors and cultures, at the same time, I am worried by how these dishes may become co-opted. Every time a chef (especially one who does not come from the culture of the food they serve) alters their ingredients to fit into their dish, they risk losing the history and cultural significance behind them.
This brings us to cultural appropriation: a practice that involves members of a dominant culture taking—and often commodifying and trivializing—elements from a culture of people who have been systematically oppressed by that dominant group (https://everydayfeminism.com/2015/06/cultural-appropriation-wrong/). Think of white celebrities/models wearing dreadlocks or braids, or last year at an Olympics party when some K students wore kimonos and talked about shoving sushi down people’s throats. Or even the hot debate right now about whether a girl wearing a 旗袍 qípáo dress to her high school prom counts as appropriation (I’m still torn…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLgzFCifhaY)
Food doesn’t often arise as a topic in the discourse of cultural appropriation, perhaps because it seems an innocuous enough item more conducive to cultural exchange (https://everydayfeminism.com/2013/09/cultural-exchange-and-cultural-appropriation/). However, this goes beyond enjoying burritos—it comes down to recognizing that our attitude toward food from different cultures can in turn inform our attitudes about said cultures.
Is food appropriation something you’ve ever thought about?
Here are some additional questions I’ve been grappling with:
What is the line between appreciation and appropriation, between inspiration and theft, when it comes to food?
Regarding the above question, what is ownership? Who is allowed to borrow what? And when—and who—makes these decisions?
Like Khan suggests, are these even the right questions to be asking? If you think we should be asking other questions, what are they?
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on Thursday!
Two dishes that really stand out to me from my mother's side of the family, who are of polish descent, are kielbasa and Golumpki. Kielbasa is a sausage that can be served fresh or smoked, and makes the table at pretty much every family gathering between Thanksgiving and Easter. Golumpki was always much rarer, but I loved when my grandma would make it.
ReplyDeleteI found the following article embedded in the everydayfemenism article that you linked, that addresses exchange and appropriation. I think it has some common points with a clip from "Mind of a Chef" season 1 episode 16 (I couldn't find a link, but it is the scene at the 20 minute mark when the chefs are talking about copying in cuisine). I think the common thread between the two sources is the importance of respect, and not claiming responsibility for the work of others. I think the current fusion movement really complicates this, as chefs walk a fine line between crediting original ingredients and techniques, while also claiming the credit of new combinations of techniques that aren't theirs, or their culture's. But I also think food provides an excellent point of first entry into cultures that someone may not have experience with. I think food is also a great way to start conversations that can prompt cultural exchange and sharing between friends. I wonder whether scale might be a part of cultural exchange as well; persons from different cultural backgrounds coming together to share their experiences with food feels like it may be different from commercial scale exchange, but I'm not sure.
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ReplyDeleteI also come from a biracial background, and I alternated between eating homemade spicy pickles, teriyaki beef, and sashimi at my paternal grandmother's house, to hearty helpings of meat and potatoes at my maternal grandmothers. While traveling, food is for me one of the most distinctive and memorable aspects of the experience. Food is a grounding experience, and being able to share a meal with the locals of whatever country you're visiting is one of the best ways to get a taste for the culture.
ReplyDeleteThe inverse of this is when food is imported in the form of easily packaged and sold "ethnic" food, whether it comes in the form of an 3-star restaurant, or your local "chinese" take out place. During this transition, the food is often altered to suit local tastes, to the point where it is often irreconcilable with the original dish. For example, at Yao Ming's first game with the Houston Rockets, fortune cookies were handed out to every member of the audience. Yao Ming himself had to ask what they were - as in the video above.
I think food is a huge part of culture. Food is such a huge part of people's daily lives and celebrations/gatherings. I think food can definitely be appropriated, as any aspect of culture. Being conscious that you are enjoying the food of another culture is important, and perhaps learning about the origins of the food - why do they eat it?, or with what celebrations that food is eaten with can lead to more appreciation of the food. I think knowing and respecting and honoring the roots of something leads to appreciation rather than appropriation.
ReplyDeleteI also think sharing food is one of the best things. Trading recipes and dishes is exciting and connects people. Everyone needs to eat, so in a way it is like music, Food is universal.
My family makes Ukrainian Easter bread every Easter, which is an egg-based sweet fruit bread that we give to friends, family, and the priests at my dad's church. (My dad's grandma used to say for bread, "one loaf: one hundred degrees for two hours. Two loaves: two hundred degrees for two hours. Three loaves...." and the only reason we know this isn't actually the way to do it was that she used to make ten loaves at a time, and the house was never burned down...) We also make a variety of "Italian peasant food," which is mostly pasta dishes with corn, beans (like garbanzo beans or kidney beans), sometimes spinach, and assorted other vegetables occasionally. Everything is coarsely chopped and drizzled with a generous helping of olive oil.
ReplyDeleteI definitely see that culinary techniques and dishes are frequently appropriated, just like any other part of culture. I think this is an especially interesting part of culture to look at when it comes to power dynamics between nations, because colonization is so often tied to detachment from traditional methods, paired with an influx of new types of food. Cooking techniques can be shared across many different cultures and still result in very different dishes. Different ingredients are claimed as traditional by many different cultures too: for example, Thai chile peppers come from-- surprise!-- South America, but most people that I talked to in Thailand said that they had always been in Thailand and were central to Thai food identity. I think it's cool that food can be shared between cultures, and that this is a potential form of bonding; however, I also see how taking credit for another culture's food is exploitative in a similar way as taking credit for another culture's manner of dress or hairstyle, etc. can be harmful and exacerbate power dynamics. Fusion cooking seems to inhabit an in-between space, since it doesn't 'belong' to any one culture but is borne of combination that results in something entirely different from either culture's tradition (often, probably not always).
Cultural appropriation is something I have thought about and still struggle to figure out, and while I have thought about it less in terms of food, I feel like food can possibly be a major way in which cultures are appropriated. As Yasmin Khan talks about in her article, I feel like many ingredients, recipes, and meals become popular or mainstream in Western societies, however, it is often not the people from which those ingredients, recipes, and meals are pulled from who reap the benefits from their rising popularity. Therefore, even as the foods become increasingly successful and known, the representation of people of color remains stagnant. I think this just reveals one of the many ways in which racism and dominant power structures continue to work in our society. These structures need to be recognized and acknowledged by all in our society, especially those that belong to groups that often reap the benefits of the work of other cultures. When it comes to appropriation versus appreciation of food, I still think this is really difficult to determine as it is complex. We don't want to entirely stop the exchange and sharing of food and cultures, but at the same time, we do not want the foods of other culture's being stolen or misrepresented without giving credit to those of which they came. I think a huge thing that needs to be present here is respect. People, especially chef's that make a name for themselves in the industry, who use ingredients or recipes from other cultures need to be respectful and give credit where it is due. However, I still struggle with this because even when a chef is respectful, it does not erase all the power dynamics that exist around them being able to present that food on a large platform for the public's consumption. Why aren't chefs of color as regularly represented? Why do we so often need to be introduced to a culture's food through the lens of a dominant group? I am interested in the discussion that this topic will bring, as this is something I have always reflected on and continue to be unclear about. Thank you for bringing this discussion to the table.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, thank you so much for these resources. I was particularly interested in Khan's article. It gave me space I've never had to reflect on food in my life. The food stories start with my parents and their mixed identities each. But beyond that there is something more. I think of all the Philippine and Thai families that are our kin, the different regional foods of Mexico I am familiar with by having an adopted family, the generational Cantonese recipes given to my father from the family we see every other day at the corner of 25th and Western. There are also the places to buy the best spices that my dad found when talking to a friend. The local meat markets that go from Halal to Mexican to the finest Italian cuts you've ever had. I feel like these combinations of flavors have change my understanding of food in my life forever. They are something of a geographical phenomenon as well. There is no other place I know these can exist, and in all the love that lives in them, except in my home, with the people I love.
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