Unit 1 - P2

P2: Read the two pieces by Ahn and Nicholson. What cultural and personal significance do the authors attach to food? Compare how they do so? Did reading these pieces remind you of your own connection to food, and if so how?

            What I think is interesting about the article "Home Run - My Journey Back to Korean Food" by Roy Ahn is how it starts off with the observation that in a Korean food establishment, you will most likely see "Koreans like [him]self," plus people of other cultures. Because while he is of Korean-descent and attends restaurants where other Korean-descent people also go, he still ponders whether or not he is embodying the cultural identity that he was growing up with from his parents - challenged by slips of the tongue like galbi-tang vs. galbi-chim which make him unconfident.

            This speaks a lot to how he attaches cultural and personal significance to food because he equates heritage to knowledge of native foods. When he was younger, the personal significance for food is, how what he ate, became a "testament to [his] successful American acculturation." As a teen, he began talking of food in terms of "convenience" where he "downplay[ed] [his] ethnic roots" as a teenager and ate what his friends did - pizza, etc. and the "dual-fridge" where Korean food was in the garage and American food was in the kitchen. (The placement of which is also very interesting)

            It is very nice to see in the end of the article how Ahn's views changed after his parents' death (R.I.P. Mr and Mrs. Ahn), and he had chosen to pass on the significance food has had on his life to his son, Charlie, by exposing his son to his half of his family culture and his dreams of cooking Korean and non-Korean cuisine at his birthday party, undeterred by the "Korean-ness" of the dishes, and how he noticed how his Korean culture manifested itself in subtleties in how he cooked things.

            With Geoff Nicholson's "Eating White", the cultural significance is derived from "the way [his] mother would have wanted it," and personally, food becomes more significant to him depending on "authenticity."  I think that line that speaks to me the most in the article is when he talks about the "packaged, ground white pepper" since anything else would have "adulterated the whiteness." There is a noticeable play on the word white in the memoir, in terms of the color of the foods that it describes as well as the skin color of the writer as an expat Brit. He talks about how growing up in England, drinking "school milk" was like a "moral duty," which is interesting because Nicholson seems to attach food to the rigidity of his mother's "white food" diet, almost like a moral duty of its own.

            Both authors compare food based on the influences of their parents, but Nicholson attaches food to old-fashioned conventionality and authenticity whereas Ahn uses food to explore his culture in the midst of other ones like Americans. Nicholson's nondescript recounting of his father's habits where he wanted no "adventure" when he ate his meat and potatoes parallels how Nicholson attaches very little personal significance to food and seems more preoccupied by distinguishing whether or not the food is "white" or not. It seems that when comparing the two articles, Ahn focuses on the enrichment food has on a culture whereas Nicholas associates it with cultural blandness and white - this idea of absence of any semblance of color/vividness.

            As the only Filipino-American in my family, I tend to relate to Ahn's experience moreso than Nicholson's because I find myself preferring American food as opposed to food from my ethnic roots, simply because of my upbringing. I used to worry about whether I was neglecting my heritage through food. Sometimes, it is hard to distinguish between what constitutes my cultural vs personal connection to food because it can be a mix of eating it because of this "obligation" I feel towards my culture and doing it because I like it, while it also coincidentally being food of my ethnic roots. For my parents, I'd think they'd relate more to Nicholson because of how much they draw back from their experience in the Philippines how the tropical fruit, fish, etc. here are not as they are "back home."As an aside, I'm guessing another way people might empathize with Nicholson's connection to food could be the portrayal of Chinese fast food here in America in places like Panda Express where people might be skeptic to whether it really is "Chinese" ... or maybe not, and they proceed to chow down without a second thought.