Stefan Nikolic
Reflection 1
Introduction: Food in Multi-Ethnic Literatures by: Fred L. Gardaphé and Wenying Xu
The article “Introduction: Food in Multi-Ethnic Literatures” by authors Fred L. Gardaphé and Wenying Xu speaks of the relationship between food, and people’s expression of their culture. This is evident when they state, “In the United States, relationships between food and ethnicity bear historical, social, cultural, economic, political, and psychological significance” (5). The authors provide a variety of sub-claims and support them with evidence from other scholastic articles. The authors offer various credible sources from different writers and time periods to help back up their main claim.
They expand on this initial claim with an example of cultural assimilation in America, and the role food has to play in that. The authors include an article from 1897 which shows how food was used to ostracize Italian culture. The commentary is written in a way that puts down Italians and their food. The author describes the way they eat and their food as “not elegant” and “unconventional” (6). Overall this characterization of Italian food helps to create a deeper divide between cultures and make one seem better than the other. Furthermore, they provide more evidence to this claim by showing how in order to protest assimilation to American cultures Italians, “threw away rations of cold cereal” (7). This helps prove that food plays a huge role in how people represent their culture. People reject the foods and customs of other cultures in order to maintain their own culture and feel safe.
This article shows how cultures, despite their efforts, mix, something that is closely related to our class curriculum. As shown in the article, these cultures try to resist assimilation and try to maintain the customs and cultures of their homeland. For example, once the Italian culture was first brought over, it was alienated and made out to seem undesirable. Additionally, the Italian culture didn’t want to adopt the American ways, which is shown by their unwillingness to eat cold cereal. However, as time passed these cultures inevitably fused together, sharing parts from each other. This article helps show how our city became so culturally diverse. Now most people have adopted customs and foods from various different cultures, helping our city become more and more diverse. Foods can help bridge together cultures, or be the factor that separates them.
Questions:
- Why did foods begin to breach cultural barriers as the generations passed??
- Why is food so culturally significant to people?
- Now that cultures have mixed deeply, how can you differentiate between what is “American “ food, and what is “Ethnic” food?
