Hungry for culture

Posted by admin on Feb 3, 2009 in From the Editor | 0 comments

When I was in high school, I had one goal: to marry someone with a heritage so I could eat specific, foreign foods at the holidays.

I realize this is ridiculous. But while my goals in life have expanded, my craving for a claim on cultural foods has not. The closest I got was eating corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day. Unfortunately, I’m not Irish.

I used to think I was Norwegian growing up (I’m about one-fifth). That is what my dad said we were. So when asked, I would say proudly, “I’m Norwegian!” But it’s a simple fact that if you can’t name one food specific to your heritage, you aren’t allowed to claim it. So I settled for being Oklahoman and Californian and Washingtonian, with some Albertan thrown in for spice.

I get told I am the most American person someone knows at least weekly. It’s often in good fun, though I wouldn’t be surprised if it was sometimes derogatory. That’s okay, because like Lee Greenwood before me, I’m proud to be an American. But that fact leaves me with little cultural identity.

Being an Only-American – and on some levels, from what I can discern, being an Only-Canadian – is like being everything and nothing at the same time.

My dinners at home reflect this. Night one: enchiladas. Night two: Sweet-n-sour pork. Night three: Chicken alfredo. All taken from another culture, all made with no ties to a past more poignant than “earlier this week at the supermarket.”

Americans are asked to be proud of a culture of conglomeration that becomes something new with every newcomer; it is ambiguous and ever changing.

So, when my friends told stories of making masa with their abuela for tamales, brought samosas as a snack to school or got German candy in the mail from relatives, I was jealous. I love chicken nuggets and Capri-Suns, but as heritage foods they’re connected to little. I felt like all of my friends-with-a-culture had something timeless and unchanging. Their foods with foreign sounding names had an exoticism of which I could only dream, a glorified heritage to celebrate.

I’m not pretending I’m the only one in this situation. A quick, unscientific poll of my six roommates reveals that one-third of Americans and Canadians have no cultural heritage influencing them apart from “American” or “Canadian.”

I’m also not trying to say that this makes my life more difficult than others, or that an ambiguous cultural identity is some insurmountable obstacle. Nor could I deny the beauty in the multiculturalism of North American lives.

But there is a part of me that wants to be tied to something grander than a young heritage, more unique than mere appropriation. Being American means being proud to be an American; I want just a little more, just one foreign pastry to eat on Christmas morning.

I was recently listening to This American Life, where one woman told the radio show that with the election of Barack Obama, she hoped herself and people she knew would be able to stop seeing themselves as “African-Americans,” and as just “Americans.”

I hope she knows what she’s getting herself into.