My Place With Culinary Tourism

After working on my final perfect meal assignment, the idea of food in relation to identity seemed like an idea to come back to, and I found myself reading through Long's Culinary Tourism piece once again. Long's believes that food can serve as a "vivid entryway into another culture" (1). Coming from a biracial family, thinking through the cultures I have experienced and in what contexts I might be a tourist has been tough negotiations.

This reminds me when in "Stealing Buddha's Dinner", Bich visits her homeland, but feels like someone in between tourist and citizen. She isn't quite at home in America or in Vietnam. Should I ever visit Kolkata, India (where my mother was born, and where family lives), I imagine I'd feel the same way. I don't know if I'll ever feel more comfortable there than in America, although I do plan on visiting with my brothers when they are a bit older. I know a lot about America but very little about my mom's home country. Even though I know a lot about America, living in this country as someone who reads as a "racially ambiguous" woman has been uncomfortable at times. Folks sometimes project their ethnicity onto me, assuming that I then know about the foods they are comfortable with. I know mac n cheese a hell of a lot better than I know aloo gobi or any other culturally-specific food. (This brings up the way many folks see a person of color and assume they have one specific cultural experience, just because of the way they appear. We conflate race with culture a lot of the time, and it can be harmful and exclusionary)

Long notes that food can help map and understand belonging and comfort. I guess she is correct in the sense that I feel more white than Indian, and have uneasiness around my Indian side. I visited my mom's mother last week. I call her Dida, which means grandmother in Bengali, and she said "I really am Indian" after dipping my cookie into tea, like I've seen her and my mother do all my life. It was a funny moment that I definitely have put a lot of thought into. She smiled with such pride, and I felt good about it. The way of drinking tea feels comfortable and reads to be "Indian" as Dida says. Still, my process of coming into my identity is slow, and one I wish I can speed up. But it all takes time, and I need to be more respectful of the journey - it is a lot like microwave dinners versus home cooked meals, for me. The one that took more effort more often than not has a higher reward.