Eating & Belonging: A Conversation
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So American!
From Deepa
15 July 2012
Mark:
I got called American last week. Not once or twice, but a few different times, by a few different people. “Entering your home is like entering an American house.” “Oh you’re so American.” “You sound so American!” “Your door is an American style door.”
I had to be polite. This wasn’t racism or xenophobia by a longshot, but the remarks had an edge; they weren’t precisely compliments; more like paper cuts: not deep, not debilitating, but persistently painful. So, with each new remark, I smiled a little wider, and gritted my teeth a little harder.
On one level, there was the truth of it. I had lived in North America, after all, for just about all my intellectual and professionally formative years. I hold an American passport. I work for an American University. My two babies arrived there, natural born Texans. In some keen sense, each of us four grew up there, and the place, the ideals it represents, and the possibilities it has opened up for us, the friendships it has nurtured, remain central to our senses of self. Of course we carried traces and telltale signs. How could it have been otherwise?
On another level, there were ironies, slathered on thick. It took a move across the continents and seas, back to the motherland, to acquire our “American” identification. All the years we spent in North America, we had been, visibly, racially, ethnically, culturally Indian, South Asian, even “Pakis” sporting “Paki dots”–as the red dot that Indian women mark on their foreheads, called the pottu or the bindi, laughably becomes in the misinformed language of white racism: Pakistanis, being generally Muslim, don’t wear bindis. When we moved into a neighborhood, or got jobs, or enrolled our kids in schools, people were happy that we made these places more diverse–or so the official story went. We were consulted by well-meaning friends on all things Indian, including said Paki dot. Friends coming to dinner would ask what alcoholic beverage would best complement “Indian.” They would experience the spices and the tastes of our meals as exotica; they would ask about ethnic aisles in American supermarkets as though these were the gullies of far-off bazaars. We were, each of us in our hundreds of Indian homes, mistresses of spices.
So much so, we worried, when our house went on the market, what impression the lingering smells of “curry” would leave on potential buyers, and then we did everything we could with vents and windows and paints to neutralize the impressions we’d crafted so carefully at dinner the night before. At work, I was almost effortlessly an “India specialist,” consulted as such on the strength of close to two decades of research on India, politics, gender, religion, and social movements. My students would gawk when I spoke about caste, while others either marveled at the impenetrability of the topic or bristled when we refused easy explanations. But nobody would deny that if there was one thing that was irrefutable about us, barring the handful of times that we were mistaken for Mexicans, that other brown-skinned group around, it was that we were Indian.
When we became Americans, it was not at that solemn ceremony held in a high-school basketball stadium with seating for thousands somewhere up in North Houston, at which smiling well-meaning American (nay, Texan) women sidled up to ask, with so much feeling, how we felt at that precise moment of citizenship. Not even when we stood in the immigration queues at Chennai airport and stuck out our spanking new American passports rubber-banded to OCI [Overseas Citizen of India] documents. No, when we claimed the identity and presented it proudly, we noticed how the immigration officials smirked at us while they smiled broadly, even giggling, at the white Americans who stood before and after us in the queues–not once or twice, but routinely.
The moment of our citizenship came later, unexpectedly, when my older one joined school and the girls laughed at his accent and the story of his origins. Or when well-meaning friends leveraged the term to speak their discomfort at the foreignness of our aesthetic choices, or our demands for responsiveness, responsibility, and precision. Or when other US-returned Indians called us, to ask not about spices but restaurants, or where the heck one gets fresh cream in this town, pleaseplease something close to the heavy cream of the American dairy case, something that doesn’t, well, stink. We huddled together as Americans when “American” became an epithet: when we were not-so-kindly or ever-so-slightly-cuttingly called American, our ways smirked at, our desires more-and-less out of place. When we were interpellated as American subjects, as Althusser might have said.
Hey, you there! calls the police officer.
Assuming that the theoretical scene I have imagined takes place in the street, the hailed individual will turn round. By this mere one-hundred-and-eighty-degree physical conversion, he becomes a subject. Why? Because he has recognized that the hail was “really” addressed to him, and that “it was really him who was hailed” (and not someone else). [Althusser Lenin, 1970: 118]
“Take it as a compliment,” advised another friend. Indeed. What else is left to do but to answer the call to becoming an ideological subject?
So: Hell yeah, I’m American. I’m Canadian, too, and (South) Indian through and through, but never mind my multitudes. For now I am singular, distilled. I claim the identity that calls me, in something the way feminists reclaim “bitch,” African Americans “n—–,” and the gay movement becomes, quite self-assuredly, queer.
American. One hundred percent American.
Chicken breasts cooked on a hot griddle with olive oil, and seasoned with salt and freshly ground chipotle
Fiddling around for some quick way to embrace my new ideological existence, something quick and greasy: “burgers and fries.” I’m playing with the idea here, of burgers and fries as an ideological state apparatus, or an ISA, as Althusser has called the complex of institutions (family, media, educational system, religious institutions etc.) that constitute us as willing subjects. [ISAs are to be contrasted with RSAs, Repressive state apparatuses which coerce rather than compel identifications with prevailing social norms. Think of the police, or the law, for example.]
It’s a stretch, possibly, but burgers-and-fries are virtually an American institution, if you think for a moment of their centrality to the American diet [think: fast food and read Eric SchlosserÕs Fast Food Nation], their place in defining American regional cuisine [Read: John T. EdgeÕs Hamburgers and Fries: An American Story or explore A Hamburger Today], their role in shaping the American drive-in drive-through and drive-by landscape that, in turn, instituted the preeminence of the automobile and its massive, supporting political-ideological infrastructure.
Were these burgers in the end, if the meat wasn’t ground? What makes a burger a burger? The bread? The patty? The assemblage? All of the above?
Look at it thus, and burgers and fries are larger than life mirrors which we recognize our reflections: American.
And why not? The burger is a quintessential American icon, à la Linton, all the more given its unknown-yet-probably-global composition: a patty that derives from practices of shredding meat that traces back to medieval Eurasia, through to the German “Hamburg steak” that was, by the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, being sold in between bun halves. And so was born, from a history of the world, the all-American hamburger. Fittingly a proletarian dish, since it used ground beef and leftover trimmings. Iconically American as mom and apple pie, not for its verifiable authenticity but for the grand immigrant story it also narrates.
[We didn't do beef, though. We couldn't. Why not? Because we ain't no Pakis.*]
*That means that we’re Hindu, who generally hold beef eating taboo for semi-religious reasons (or, if you ask Anthropologist Marvin Harris, because the cow is worth more to the Indian economy alive than dead). Muslims, on the other hand, have a taboo against consuming pork, though beef is fair game.
And the fries. Potatoes, frenched (that is, julienned) and fried in “a French manner” (as Thomas Jefferson is reported to have described the technique imported to the Colonies in the 1700s), theyÕre irrevocably assigned French origins. So much so that renamed “freedom fries” were the popular nationalist retort to France’s opposition to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq: a boycott down to dubious origins. And now unfailing partner to the burger, in sickness and in health.
We embraced the burger and fries partnership as resolute consolidation of our agency as immigrant Americans in Pondicherry. Our condiments and beverages completed the demonstration: Heinz 57 (none of this Kissan-Maggi local stuff), Hellmann’s mayonnaise, Coke (not the mimicry of Indian Thumbs Up, and no ordinary soda either), iced tea. We could have gone on to shakes and finished things off with apple pie and ice cream, but we figured enough; we’d made our point. We’d responded to the call to citizenship; we’d recognized ourselves in the mirror held up. The kids had waited patiently for the meal with considerable anticipation, and had even hugged me for my recreation of greasy American fare, which we all admittedly miss.
“In ideology,” says Althusser, “the real relation is invariably invested in the imaginary relation, a relation that expresses a will (conservative, conformist, reformist, or revolutionary), a hope or a nostalgia, rather than describing a reality.” [Althusser, For Marx, 1970: 234]
And now time to sit down and eat.
Deepa
References:
Althusser, Louis. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Trans. Ben Brewster. New York: Monthly Review Press, [1970] 2001.
Althusser, Louis. For Marx. New York: Vintage, 1970
Harris, Marvin. 1966. The cultural ecology of India’s sacred cattle. Current Anthropology 7/1: 51-66.
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Well, this blog conversation resonates with me on several levels. I lived in a conservative small town in Tennessee for the first 22 years of my life. My schedule consisted of school, time with family, church, and tradition. Many of the family traditions revolved around food.
On Monday nights, we went to my maternal grandparent’s house where we ate homegrown (my grandparents raised all of their vegetables without pesticides…..this was before the term “organic” was in fashion) green beans cooked in an iron skillet, fried green tomatoes, Mexican cornbread, and fried okra. Cooking was my grandmother’s passion, and she was always trying new “Southern” dishes. I remember canning (putting all the goodness that they grew in their gardne into jars to enjoy later) with grandmother during the summers. We put the tomatoes in the hot water so that the skin could be removed easily and then we added peppers and vinegar turning it into a relish to be enjoyed on black eyed peas. Unfortunately, my grandmother died last year, and I miss these dishes and the love that she put into them.
On Sundays, we went to my paternal grandparent’s house for more good home cooking. My grandmother prided herself on cooking the “old fashioned” way which for her meant cooking with lard. We had dishes such as fried chicken, greasy buttermilk biscuits, mashed potatoes with gravy, and Mississippi mudcake (her favorite) which is a chocolate cake with marshmallows and icing on top. My grandmother has always loved to eat and always says, “There is nothing that I enjoy more than watching others eat the foods that I have created.” My family sat around the table and told stories and laughed. These stories shaped my life and my identity and these stories were all told over sweet tea with lemon or fresh coffee.
When I was 22 years old, I moved to Rio de Janeiro, a city of 8-12 million, and Lincoln, my husband, and I lived in a studio apartment (an euphemism for a 1 room apartment). We ate mostly out and about in the city. Self-service or buffet style salad bars, coffee with milk and crunchy cheese bread became our daily routine. Life was fast-paced, noisy, and the movement of the city intoxicating.
At this point, I became “the other.” People called me the gringo or said, “Your Portuguese is so cute.” I didn’t want my Portuguese to be “cute”. I just wanted to communicate. After living in Rio for 2 years, I went back home to visit my family. When I got off the plane, my mother said, “Stop talking that way.” Apparently I had picked up an accent while teaching ESL to Brazilians. I had also picked up the open way in which Brazilians speak about sex and other subjects considered “taboo” in my town. My mother used to say, “Don’t talk about those topics in mixed company.”
All of a sudden, I became “the other” in my hometown.” Old friends would say, ” I guess you are just so happy to be in the United States.” I used to answer, “Well, yes and no.” My stories at the table had changed and my family could no longer identify. I lived in Brazil for 5 years and my worldview and identity changed.
My husband and I moved to Houston, a city where very few people are originally from here (as Deepa touched on in her post). We have lived here for 6 years and again my identity has changed. Many people ask, “Where are you from?” I can’t quite place your accent (which seems to be a clear marker of identity for many). Sometimes you sound “southern” and other times you sound “foreign”. My Brazilian friend states, “You seem more Brazilian than American.” What does that mean exactly? Well, I guess where you have been and lived also (like your homeland)becomes “imprinted” (the term that Mark uses) on your body. The traces are always there…
Learning to negotiate these “identities” has been a wonderful growing experience and as Mark states, “I think as I get older, it matters far less to me that I fit seamlessly in every new culture I enter — or even within the two major cultures (North American and something-Indian) in which I live…The fun thing about putting a few years on oneself is that one gets to know their own likes and dislikes, and is better able to prioritize the former. Likewise, one has a bit better judgment about which idiosyncrasies to indulge and which to keep behind polite cover.”
Yes, when I first went to Brazil being called “gringo” bothered me and the first time I went home after moving away, the fact that my “differentness” was the subject of much conversation irritated me but now in my 30s, I have raised my consciousness about what this “differentness” means and can identify the ways that these experiences have shaped my identity. I no longer become offended or irritated but rather appreciate the many different experiences that I have had both in the United States and abroad that have shaped who I am. Therefore, “differentness” becomes a point of pride rather than irritation or maybe it is just becoming “more comfortable” in your own skin (whatever that skin may be or preceived to be).
My paternal grandmother is still living and every time I make it home, she makes her famous Mississippi Mud Cake, and we still drink fresh coffee (she always makes what she calls a “fresh pot”) and tell stories. Although the stories may have changed and I am negotiating several identities at once, the Mississippi Mud Cake tastes the same and brings me back to my home where my journey and the stories began.
Here is a recipe for a version of my grandmother’s Mississippii Mud Cake. I found this at: http://www.food.com/recipe/mississippi-mud-cake-67117. It was the closest recipe that I could find on the web.
Cake
1 cup butter
1/2 cup cocoa
2 cups sugar
4 large eggs, slightly beaten
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 dash salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups pecans (optional)
4 cups mini marshmallows
Chocolate frosting
1 (16 ounce) package powdered sugar, sifted
1/2 cup milk
1/3 cup cocoa
1/4 cup softened butter
Directions:
1
Preheat oven to 350°F.
2
Lightly grease a 9×13 inch pan.
3
Melt the butter in a medium saucepan.
4
Add the cocoa and stir.
5
Remove from the heat.
6
Pour butter mixture into a mixing bowl and add sugar and eggs.
7
Mix until blended.
8
Add the vanilla.
9
Mix in the flour and salt.
10
Stir in the pecans.
11
Put batter into prepared pan and cook for 35 minutes or until done.
12
Remove from oven and sprinkle with marshmallows.
13
Cool in the pan on a wire rack.
14
For the frosting: Combine all of the ingredients and mix until smooth. Spread frosting on cooled cake.
15
If your frosting is too thick, add more milk.
Bridget, how fabulous is this addition to the conversation; thank you. I love the detours through different sorts of identifications, and the insider-outsider ambivalence that unfailingly manages to find expression. But I want to know, though I sort-of do already: was “gringo” American? Only? More than? Or, even more complicatedly, was “Southern” American? There’re class issuesas well that could be brought into play, if they apply. (I suppose this conversation thus far has been driven by the American epithet, as Mark has called it (though that might change in subsequent posts), and I’m curious to know how far that’s true of the experiences you recount. Most of all, I love that you end with Mississippi mud. Mississippi mud cake, that is. I’ve never made one (though you can rest assured that now I shall, and post photos to boot), but I love the earthiness of the idea, especially as that relates to this conversation about roots, belonging, and being of the soil, if I may extend the mud metaphor you introduce.
In Brazil, “gringo,” as in other contexts, has complex meanings. The term “gringo” (for most Brazilians) means “a white tourist (can be European or American) who can’t walk in the city (usually lost, looking up with a sun-burned face, and has a map in his or her hand) or communicate very well. The “gringo” usually uses rudimentary Portuguese and speaks with a heavy accent. It is not usually a derogatory term or signify only being “American.”
Actually, in most spaces in Brazil, the people have what I call a “love affair” with Americans. I often felt that positive value was placed on that part of my identity. For example, for my ESL students, I had “American night,”(so by doing this was I implying that being American meas eating McDonalds and getting fat?) and we watched the movie “Super Size Me” and had McDonalds delivered. They loved it. This love affair in the bigger cities is now changing because as Brazil has become more visible (Olympic Games, World Cup, and the recent oil discoveries off the cost of Rio de Janeiro), more tourists and business people have descended on the big cities so these “gringos” and “other foreingers” (as they are called) have become the social norm.
In smaller states, “gringos” and Americans still create fascination. The last time I was in Brazil, I visited a sister-in-law, who lives in a small city. I visited her high school sociology class and they all wanted to know how to say their names in English. They also had questions about shopping, Disney world, and various ideas of “Americanness” put forth by films. I was visiting the social movement “People without Land” and a woman asked “So as an American, do you think Osama Bin Laden is dead?” In this space, I got more socially conscious questions and more questions about the excess of American capitalism. So, what it means to be and the value placed on being American changes depending on the space that you are visiting (which can sometimes be linked to class). So, being called “American” or “So American” is not necessarily an eptithet but just a pointing out of “differentness” or the idea that you embody their idea of what it means to be American (whatever that may be).
To be honest, when people say that I have a twinge of Southern in my accent, I think that it is because they know that I am from Tennessee and Lincoln is from Brazil so they project that onto my accent.
Trust me, it’s not just projection. Go back onto Pâticheri’s Facebook page. Find the image of the Aunt Sassy Cake, and the text that accompanies it. Read it out loud to yourself. Whether you hear it yourself or no, there it will be, right there : ) There’s a story told of the Mughal Emperor Akbar and his famously witty minister, Birbal. A linguist comes to court with a challenge: guess his mother tongue, so many languages does the man speak with fluent ease. All the courtiers try but fail to find any sign of imperfection in his mastery of language. Birbal, ever patient, waits for the night. He has a boy splash a bit of cold water on the man’s face as he sleeps. The man wakes, startled and exclaiming. And so does Birbal, waiting and listening outside the man’s room, identify the man’s mother tongue. See? : )
Another beautifully written post, and the pictures are wonderful. I feel very honored that you made the Mississippi mud cake and featured it on the blog.
This comment is in reference to my previous comment about my journey from Tennessee to Brazil to Houston. My paternal grandfather used to love (before his health problems) to drive a wagon and raise tomatoes. He often speaks of how “the land” saved his family during the depression and if young people can’t go to the grocery store (because of a new depression) then they will not know how to work the land in order to survive. My maternal grandparents always had a garden and, like I said, I spent summers canning. What great things were learned those summers. I spent many days when I was a child making “mud pies” and “mud cakes” under the hot Tennessee sun. So, the metaphor of earth, land, and mud run deep within my family! My maiden name is Diggs (think of a shovel and the earth) and when I got married I kept my name and became Diggs-Fernandes (although I often only go by Fernandes).
My brother, who is a photojournalist, made a photo story/ documentary about my grandfather.
My grandfather’s voice is narrating: http://www.matthewdiggs.com/Content.php?section=Video&file=114. The video last about 7 minutes. Copy and Paste the link in your browser. In addition, you should take a look around at his blog. He has photos and other stories from Tennessee.
It is well worth watching!