Month: December 2020

ALLSPICE
ARSC 3310
Goffe
12/20/2020

ALLSPICE: Food Heritage

          In Venus In Two Acts, Sadiya Hartman (2008) critically examines the role that the archive plays in crafting the narrative of history. As Hartman (2008) argues, there is an epistemological violence enacted by the archive itself. Historians enact a constant re-infliction of terror and horror on those solely rendered as objects within the constituent narratives of the archive. To that end, Hartman draws on the figure of something close to (but not quite) fiction—critical fabulation—to allow herself to redress this violence in some small part.

    There is a depersonalization inherent within the act of archiving itself. This can be seen at Cornell in the Human Sexuality Collection. The collection maintains (in one part) an archive of love letters and diaries. Their work can be seen both as crucial, in collecting and maintaining a history that has been historically censored and stamped out, yet it is also inherently impersonal and distant. There is an unsettling quality to the act of consuming a historical artifact that was not meant for consumption—especially something as dear and private as a love letter secretly exchanged.

In crafting our own cookbook, collages, and oral histories, we sought to understand and challenge the depersonalization of work within an archive. Family recipes, histories, and collages can and do archival work, preserving and conveying the stories of those important to us. Yet these forms of archive also exist distant from, as Hartman (2008) reminds us, the consumptive and violent processes found in the underground bunkers of Ivy League libraries. Drawing from the work of Parama Roy (2010) on gastropoetics, we sought to use food as a sensorial central focus for these personal archives to allow us to convey stories that are intimate and dear and vastly important in their own right. Graphically, our posts feature high contrast oranges, pinks, and blues, tech imagery, glitchy aesthetics, bold natural elements, and repetition to underscore  this message, seeking to convey the importance of examining the oral history and our foodways to re-imagine the archive.

Family photos, albums, and collages are some of the most intimate pieces of history that people treasure in efforts to retain the memories of themselves and their ancestors. Oral histories allow us to cite and and pay respect to the hidden voices of history and memory, while also providing the space to reimagine storytelling. To examine the role of oral histories in recipe sharing, our project pulls from the artistic tradition of Albert Chong to visually venerate and recognize our individual family histories. Through this method, we acknowledge our personal contributions to the archive—in the passing down of stories, identities and recipes—and make a nod to the stories of labor that created this particular archive.

         Following the style of still-life images from contemporary artist Albert Chong, we digitally enshrine our families—their histories, their images, and ultimately their recipes. Albert Chong, an artist of Chinese-Jamaican ancestry, works with the mediums of photography, installation and sculpture on narratives of identity, family and spirituality. His primary photographic work features still-life images, in which he fabulates meaning by arranging organic materials, inanimate objects and family photos. The organic and inorganic materials interact for photographic documentation, as a physical iteration of the continuity of the past, present and future. He explains, “the construction of the still life image assumes a primacy akin to an act of a sacred ritual. The objects become more than just props for the artists, but objects of power for the Shaman. The still life becomes in effect a shrine, an altar, an offering” (Chong, n.d.). Our family collages pose as visual shrines to stories of life and labor in our families and through them we acknowledge our own lineage and traditions. Though photographs are not verbal, as the term “oral history” suggests, they do speak to the role of capturing and preserving historical moments in ways that give recognition to the lives of people on the peripheries of historical narratives.

Kayla B’s experience working for Cornell dining is an example of the vitality and importance of food service workers and their personal oral histories. In this part of the assignment, our main goal was to accurately demonstrate the reality of working for dining. We tried our best to not fall into the trap of respectability by glamorizing or oversimplifying Kayla’s sentiments towards her workplace. We did not want to stroke the ego of Cornell by trying to communicate only the positive aspects of the work experience. Nonetheless, our motive was to understand the culture and drive that goes behind every meal students enjoy each night, contributing and acting on our food heritages. Additionally, we wanted to bring this assignment into our current global landscape by discussing how COVID-19 has created challenges or advantages to working at Cornell Dining. 

Firstly, we needed to get a food service worker and we did not know any full time Cornell dining employees who were not students as well. We believe this is important to highlight, as the student/worker dynamic at Cornell University can be very polarizing. Looking at the current socioeconomic demographic of Cornell’s student population, 37% of the students are white and 11% are international. Half of the students at Cornell have a yearly family income of more than $100,001 while only 9% have an income of less than $30,000. These statistics contextualize the background students who occupy the dining halls have, whether they eat and serve. It is logical to say that students who make more than $100,000 a year don’t learn to cook out of necessity but probably as a leisure activity or not at all. Thus, students are disillusioned to the effort, time and skill put into each menu. Additionally, food is a major expense for the minority of students on campus who have no choice to eat in the dining halls whether they truly enjoy them or not, because it’s the only resource they have, while students with more resources can opt to eat take out. 

Moreover, we wanted to find the right person to help relay these messages and a member of our group, Jonathan Mercedes, knew Kayla since his freshman year. As a student manager, he knew she would have a lot of insight on that. Next, we had to carefully craft the questions we wanted to ask Kayla. The questions we settled on included: Who are you and how did you end up working for Cornell dining? How is working at Cornell dining now vs pre-covid? What is the most difficult part of your job and what is the most enjoyable part of your job? What kind of benefits do you receive from working for Cornell dining? Do you feel appreciation for your work? How is the menu decided? Do you feel like the cooks’ identity informs their decisions on what to cook? If there is one thing you could change about Cornell dining what would it be and why or why not? 

Although we were not able to include the entire interview within our posts, one of the largest takeaways from our interview was the social gap between full time employees and students. Other than the brief moments that we have with chefs or staff at check in or the meal pick up line, many students fail to develop a personable relationship with the workers. A majority of students do not even know the name of the head chef in the house that they live in—the people who dictate your meals, diets, health, and dining experience at Cornell become strangers. Part of it is simply a lack of time to build this relationship, but the other part stems from the bureaucratic nature of Cornell. Each portion of the school is privatized, and there is not much interconnectivity between the student affairs sector and Cornell dining. Through this oral history, we hoped to underscore this gap, and hopefully made space for a discussion to be had about fostering future connections. 

Lastly, we opted to include a discussion on service workers in our current socio-political landscape, extrapolating Kayla’s oral history of her time in Cornell dining, onto the collective oral history of service workers being written, told, and archived right now. The COVID-19 pandemic has illuminated the plight of service workers as they continue to perform underpaid and underappreciated work on the frontlines. Including this discussion it as its own separate post felt essential, stemming from the long dialogues we’ve had in class about whether “hero” is the right term for frontline workers. In fact, the Heroes project thanking members of the Cornell Tech staff was the animus for this post; thinking about how to adequately archive the people keeping society afloat right now felt integral to the work that ALLSPICE set out to do. 

With this post, we moved our in-class discussion into a public space to share this ongoing dialogue with our larger circles, pointing to the innocuous nature of calling essential workers heroes. The current efforts to archive and thank service workers often lionize these employees, implying selfless sacrifice and an element of choice, reflected in the language we employ to do this work. Inspecting language has been a huge part of our journey this semester, beginning with Prof. Goffe’s Get Free podcast conversation about decolonizing and demilitarizing our vocabulary. The pandemic has ushered a new evolution of vocabulary to describe our precarious situation, creating and evolving vocabulary we already have. Terms like “essential workers,” “frontline workers,” “hazard pay,” “hero pay,” “Personal Protective Equipment,” and “risk” have always existed individually, but have entered our shared vernacular with a new meaning. 

The evolving nature of our pandemic language begs a deeper analysis of its roots and consequences. Titled, “A Word Better Than Hero,” this slide was meant to push readers to question these accepted practices and their implications. First, we included a visual representation of the makeup of frontline workers to illuminate the lines of work service workers are returning to. We felt this is pertinent information to share and give context to the people who are umbrellaed under our new terms. Additionally, we also sought to center how additional pay has come in and out of the fold for frontline workers as a means of adequate thanks and compensation. While tributes are welcomed as a way to show appreciation for the risk frontline workers assume, these workers need monetary compensation and proper protection. Does calling frontline workers essential and thanking them go far enough, or does it eschew and undermine responsibility to protect frontline workers with seemingly innocuous vocabulary? Ultimately, (although not all frontline work is food related), our final post aimed to encapsulate how our  agricultural, healthcare, and governmental employees contribute to our collective food heritage, underscoring our larger discussion of oral history and archival work.

Bibliography

Chong, A. (n.d.). Monochromatic still lifes. Albert Chong. Retrieved December 21, 2020, from https://www.albertchong.com/monochromatic-still-life

Hartman, S. (2008). Venus in two acts. Small Axe: A Caribbean Journal of Criticism, 12(2), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1215/-12-2-1

Mannur, A. (2015). Alimentary tracts: Appetites, aversions and the postcolonial by parama roy. Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 16(1). https://doi.org/10.1353/cch.2015.0002

Roy, P. (2010). Alimentary tracts: Appetites, aversions, and the postcolonial. Duke University Press.

Who are essential workers?: A comprehensive look at their wages, demographics, and unionization rates. (n.d.). Economic Policy Institute. Retrieved December 21, 2020, from https://www.epi.org/blog/who-are-essential-workers-a-comprehensive-look-at-their-wages-demographics-and-unionization-rates/

By Sakura Eguchi, Andrew Gordon, Vivian Jiang, and Leadora Kyin

During the development of our cookbook chapter, “Turning a New Leaf: An Exploration of Food and Recipes Through Migration and Transport,” what drove our conversation was the merging of cultures, particularly amongst Africa and Asia. This semester, we were challenged to question if any cultural representation can genuinely be “authentic.” While authenticity contends, our group collectively recognized that the strong attachments people feel to their culture is valid. Foods are an essential way to stay connected to one’s culture. Our group proposed the use of banana leaves as food wrapping to preserve the cultural significance that lies within the inner filling. However, does this “authenticity” remain if the fillings are changed to foreign ingredients? What about if these cultures are brought to new lands during immigration––are they fused or distinct? These are all questions that we chose to explore.

During the current global pandemic, home-cooked meals seem to have an elevated sense of purpose. The term “comfort food” has been given several definitions over time, but the 1997 Merriam-Webster dictionary’s description as “food prepared in a traditional style having a usually nostalgic or sentimental appeal” (“Comfort Foods”) has particular significance to our project. We wanted to explore how traditional meals are valued by people, especially immigrants in a new nation. In The Book of Salt, Binh moves from Vietnam to become a chef, eventually working for two American women in Paris, France. Feeling displaced and isolated, Binh often dwells on memories of his mother, who taught him how to cook. Intimate experiences with loved ones and caregivers often take place in the kitchen during food preparation and consumption. Culturally ethnic dishes also invoke feelings of homesickness (Locher et al. 2006). This relationship between “food” and “home” is what inspired the naming of our group, Homebodies. 

During our preparation, we questioned where oral histories are placed in foodways. This brought us to the realization that there are different methodologies in the way that people share recipes with each other. While we instinctively think of family recipes in a cookbook, this is not true for everyone. In fact, many families share their kitchen secrets by word of mouth. Preparing food in this manner requires more sensorial ques that cannot be encapsulated in written recipes; this method requires direct communication between teacher and learner (Claxton 2019).

Upon finding this research, we realized the implications that oral recipe sharing had with critical fabulation, the concept developed by Saiyida Hartman. In “Venus in Two Acts,” Hartman describes critical fabulation as “laboring to paint as full a picture of the lives of the captives as possible . . . to write a cultural history of the captive, and, at the same time, enacting the impossibility of representing the lives of the captives precisely through the process of narration” (Hartman 11). This term can alternatively be described as a way to tell the life stories of those who have no written records–it is a form of archiving. Our team realized that oral recipe sharing can also be viewed as archiving the lives of our ancestors. The traditional meals we prepare use ingredients and techniques that are representative of geography. Critical fabulation in the context of oral recipes helps us imagine what life might have been like for our ancestors who pioneered these dishes, while simultaneously bringing us closer to the relatives we have in this lifetime.

The archiving is an act of cementing the past, yet throughout our course, cementation rarely means completion. Preservation does not guarantee complete coverage or thorough incorporation. There are gaps in the discourse and missing voices. Thus, it is paramount to continue to interact and engage with the archive rather than let it collect dust. Engagement with the archive can go so far into critical fabulation, where the archive and subsequently, its disparities become a catalyst for dynamic reimagination, an exciting launchpad. Conversations with the archive in effect, generate possibilities for reinvention. If there are stories untold from the past, what is stopping us from reformulating new ones, not to replace but to recognize?

When it came down to crafting our recipe, we had to contemplate the fabricated binary of traditional versus modern, convention versus reconstruction. There is a tendency for narrowing one’s aperture to focus on what is “authentic.” It is easy to find oneself in a constant tug-of-war between doing a dish “justice.” Displacement relies on the often painful contemplation of the original “placement” once was. Like Binh from The Book Of Salt and Lowe from The Pagoda, the past and its settings can haunt a person regardless of their associations with these memories and places. How much can one “owe” to their origins without inhibiting their outward growth? Being in transit does not need to be exhaustive and instead, can prove to be inventive. With the nature of our recipe, we aimed to challenge the idea of looking in strictly one direction, and instead, embrace the temporal duality of acknowledging the past in a retrospective manner, and engaging with the imagined futures full of plurality. This took in the construction of our reimagined lamprais recipe. 

Our chosen recipe, lamprais, traditionally consists of ghee rice surrounded by a variety of specific side dishes, all wrapped and baked in banana leaves. When one opens a lamprais up, the warm, spicy, and hearty aroma enters the nose, enticing the tastebuds. In the center is the ghee rice, which is made using short-grain rice cooked in stock, onions, cloves, cardamom, cinnamon, and, of course, ghee, which is clarified butter. Along the sides of any lamprais are a meat curry (lamprais curry), blachan (shrimp paste), wambatu moju (eggplant pickle), and seeni sambol (onion chutney). In some variations of lamprais, one may find frikadelle (Danish flat meatballs), fried fish cutlets, eggplant, and ash plantain curry, or twice-cooked eggs alongside their rice and curry. The lamprais curry typically consists of three types of meat–beef, pork, and lamb–but sometimes is made of chicken to suit a wider audience. The flavor profile of lamprais is complex, as it has the rich ghee rice, spiciness from the curry, and sweet, sour, and salty from the accompaniments. To top it all off, or, rather, to wrap it all up, the banana leaves provide everything inside the parcel with an earthy aroma and flavor. To assemble the lamprais, one cup of rice is placed in the middle of a banana leaf along with a small amount of the curry, and a teaspoon of each of the accompaniments. Then, the banana leaf is folded over and held together by bamboo skewers or by aluminum foil. The lamprais is placed into the oven for about twenty minutes to release the aroma from the banana leaf and to allow all of the flavors to familiarize themselves with one another in the warmth from the oven.

Confronted with a recipe with a colonial past, we began our project with the lamprais in its original form. A Sri Lankan dish imbued with Dutch colonial influences cooked in a banana leaf, the lamprais already possessed threads that were on par with the conversations from our course. We pondered on how to reimagine a story that had already been shaped by a colonial narrative. Despite its colonial context, the original dish celebrates its own Southeast Asian components with ingredient ecologies that permeated past definitive borders. By maintaining the structural qualities of the original lamprais recipe, we wanted to pursue an outward-looking, forward-facing framework while tying our dish to the theme of the course, Afro-Asia, by exchanging the lamprais’ components for dishes of African and Asian origin.

 Specifically, Ghanian kelewele and Jamaican saltfish fritters were substituted for plantain curry and frikkadels (meatballs)/fish cutlets, respectively. Replacing the three-meat curry with Sri Lankan jackfruit curry also accommodates an even wider audience than the original version of lamprais curry. Jackfruit has been used as a meat substitute for centuries in Asia, as it has a neutral flavor and can be shredded or cut into small pieces that can easily replace chicken or pork in dishes. Since the lamprais curry consists of small pieces of meat, jackfruit makes a suitable substitution. Some lamprais has a plantain curry in addition to the meat curry, so we thought of adding kelewele, Ghanian spicy fried plantains, to be a part of the dish. Though kelewele is not curry, it has the fried element of the fish cutlets that can also be found alongside the ghee rice in lamprais. Our reimagined fish cutlets are Jamaican saltfish fritters. Fritters are an essential part of African cuisine, specifically street food cuisine, and we read and wrote about the significance of saltfish in The Pagoda as well as in Albert Chong’s photography. Our reimagination applies elements and uses foods from African cuisine while trying to keep the original lamprais taste and appearance. 

Retaining the use of the banana leaves in this dish not only has practical advantages for transit and movement, but also connects to the themes of migration and preservation of culture that were explored throughout the semester. The banana leaves’ function of physically encapsulating the lamprais’ ingredients can perhaps symbolize the Sinhalese people’s attempts to maintain and preserve their culture during the Dutch colonization of Sri Lanka. In contrast, the banana leaves can simultaneously demonstrate how European influences are conserved in Sri Lankan culture and cuisine, as a result of the Dutch East India Company’s involvement in the spice trade and subsequent European colonization of Sri Lanka (Balachander).

In connection to the texts we’ve read this semester, the theme of immigration and cultural preservation is exemplified in And China Has Hands. In his novel, H.T. Tsiang illuminates Chinese immigrants’ tribulations of assimilating in American society through the story of Wong Wan-Lee, a laundry business owner who was born in Canton, China and immigrated to the U.S. Throughout the novel, Wong-Wan Lee is consistently perceived as inferior and subjected to racism by the American characters. As a result, he seeks to maintain his connection to his homeland, China, in order to ease his feelings of isolation. For example, Wong Wan-Lee purchases Chinese sweets such as “almond cakes, rice cakes, peanut candy, Lee Chee nuts, preserved mixed fruits, golden limes and ginger syrup” when settling into his laundry business (Tsiang 46). Wong Wan-Lee’s specific selection of Chinese snacks serves as a representation of the collective immigration experience, in which immigrants consume foods from their cultures to not only alleviate their homesickness, but also to preserve their culture when moving to a foreign environment (Le). 

Our chapter, “Turning a New Leaf,” seeks to analyze the past to understand the present. We explored how food consumption and preparation helps us connect to ancestors and culture because engaging with our archives prevents them from being lost. We challenged authenticity in our reimagination of the Sri Lankan lamprais by incorporating components from the African and the Asian diasporas while remaining true to the origins of the dish. We acknowledge how food builds communities and brings solace to those who feel displaced, particularly those classified as immigrants to new lands. The themes we discussed in this project are vantage points that can be used to dive deeper into authenticity, archiving, and critical fabulation.

Works Cited

Balachander, V. (2018, June 01). History Baked in Banana Leaf. Retrieved from 

https://roadsandkingdoms.com/2014/history-baked-in-banana-leaf/

Claxton, Alana, “Cooking Lessons: Oral Recipe Sharing in the Southern Kitchen” (2019). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 3550. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/3550

Hartman, Saidiya. Venus in Two Acts, vol. 26, no. 2, June 2008, pp. 1–14.

“The Importance of Food in Preserving Cultural Identity.” All About Cuisines, All About Cuisines., 13 Dec. 2013, www.allaboutcuisines.com/importance-food-preserving-cultural-identity.

Le, Chau. (2017, January 7). What Food Tells Us About Culture. Retrieved from 

https://freelymagazine.com/2017/01/07/what-food-tells-us-about-culture/

Locher, Julie L, et al. “Comfort Foods: An Exploratory Journey Into The Social and Emotional Significance of Food.” Food and Foodways, vol. 13, no. 4, 21 Aug. 2006, pp. 273–297., doi:https://doi-org.proxy.library.cornell.edu/10.1080/07409710500334509.

Solomon, Kisha. “Food as Culture – Why Cooking Is Important to Preserving Identity.” Medium, Medium, 11 Aug. 2016, medium.com/@kishasolomon/food-as-culture-why-cooking-is-important-to-preserving-identity-f9e7a74d97be.

Truong, Monique. The Book of Salt. Mariner Books, 2013. 

Tsiang, H.T. And China Has Hands. Kaya Press, 2016.

The Rice Rice Babies 

When we began the presentation, we immediately knew that we wanted to work with rice. Coming from various ethnic backgrounds, rice was a food that we all shared and was a commonality across the world in culture and dietary preferences. As we researched recipes, it became apparent that many cultures stick to certain flavors and ingredients for their traditional recipes, whether it be because those were native to their land or because they were what people knew. Our recipe combines ingredients from many parts of the world down to the garnishes; from Haitian pikliz to Korean muchim. And while it is rare, if not impossible, to find these combinations in an “actual” recipe, the mixture of flavors make sense. We want to push against that notion of “fusion confusion” as there are no distinct boundaries of food. At the start of the semester, we read DuBois’ To the Nations of the World where he stated, “Let no color or race be a feature of distinction between white and black men, regardless of worth or ability” (DuBois). This was a powerful sentiment that contrasted our personal opinions of his novel Dark Princess but we felt that it could be applied to our dish down to the details. The universality of pickling vegetables and fermented foods showed us that foods are not quite as different as we first believed and even with their slight variations, all food can essentially be stripped down to basic, universal ideas and ingredients. 

In Dark Princess, we found the quote, “‘Pan-Africa belongs logically with Pan-Asia'” (Du Bois 20). This sentence is representative of our recipe: we brought together flavors and ingredients from different parts of the world. Although they do not traditionally show up in many recipes, these ingredients make for a natural combination of flavor. Especially after researching their food genealogies, we found that many foods have similar histories that go unknown to most people. Referring back to our combination of pikliz and muchim, the independent diasporas of Afro-Asian people and their foods can only united as our once separate worlds are intertwined in this age of global interconnectedness.

Our oral history was incredibly informative as a genuine account of a food service worker at Cornell Dining. We realized that many people are unaware of the kindness and care that dining employees show us, not only just by completing their jobs every day, but in the seemingly small things they do for us, from making conversation when they see someone looking down to occasionally (and secretly) gifting free food when they notice that someone is in need. We saw how their labor was truly invisible at times; if they decided not to show up one day, Cornell would surely suffer. Like in The Book of Salt and in relation to Bình’s character, their work is invaluable but often overlooked because they are seen as perhaps “less than” or seen as an employee before they are seen as a person. 

Food is extremely important in the texts that we read this semester because it reflects upon culture and history, as well as the ideas of authenticity and belonging. While these concepts have become much more complex over time, food remains the intrinsic building block of our lives. A bite of a childhood snack can send us decades into the past and the taste of a foreign flavor can open new doors around the world. We cannot talk about history, gender, sexuality, or really any anthropological concept without also mentioning food and the essential role it plays formulating the world around us. 

In The Pagoda, we can look at identity and gender and how perception of it is fluctuating and spectral. It is hard to define gender and it is just as hard to define authenticity; over time, the manner dishes are made can change (ie. in the way of technique, etc) but despite the different name, ingredients, or kitchen equipment utilized, it is still fundamentally the same on the inside. Allowing two variants of the same idea to coexist transcends a constant struggle over which is more “real,” as they are equally valid despite unique conception. Whether Mr. Lowe identifies as male or female does not take away from the fact that at the end of the day, their hopes, desires, and personalities do not fluctuate based on how others perceive them. Another case of authenticity arises in And China Has Hands. In this book, Pearl believes that chop suey is one of the national dishes of China while Wan-Lee Wong dismisses the idea. While chop suey is not eaten in China, it still exists as an Chinese-American creation and its indirect connection to the former should not diminish its authenticity as a genuine dish that underwent a cultural adaptation. What is inauthentic to one person may be authentic to another and we cannot dismiss the many different experiences that vary throughout the world. Whether a dish is “derivative” is inconsequential because, as Lucas Sin said when he visited our class, all recipes are fusion in some sort of way. Over time and throughout history, increasing globalization meant that ingredients and cooking techniques were taken and introduced to new places all over the world. And we see this most in another text read this semester: Exit West.

Migration and globalization brought about the introduction of ingredients and recipes to different countries, continents, and cultures. The recipes we have prepared for this project were made possible by the historical exchange of goods and crops. The use of magical doors in Exit West shows the increasing ease with which these transactions become possible. In today’s day and age, one can easily obtain an exotic ingredient by ordering it online or finding it in an ethnic grocery store or restaurant. It is as easy as stepping through a portal to another country. The inevitable fusion that then occurs is not something to be ashamed of, nor does it make the food any less true to its origin. Everything has more layers than expected: one’s biological genealogy can be traced back to multiple countries, yet that does not diminish one’s valued existence. As we move through life, we add parts to ourselves, changing and evolving as we see fit. In this way we are like food travelling through time, constantly being modified to adapt and become the best version of ourselves. 

While thinking about the significance of course content in our development of the Instagram posts, especially revolving themes of authenticity and citation, we were met with backlash from a food blogger who had problems with our depiction of Nigerian Jollof as fried rice. She claimed that the pictures and recipe were hers and were not adequately cited and that claiming Nigerian Jollof is a fried rice is a misrepresentation of the cuisine. Ultimately, she wanted to have us reflect on the dish we put on the post. The grains of rice, methods of cooking, and picture did not reflect, in her mind, an authentic Nigerian Jollof either. We ended up taking down the post.

Personal Reflections

Reflection from Jae: I am grateful for my family’s ability to access healthy, organic foods. Home cooked meals from scratch were the norm in my household. It is peculiar to me to see so many pre-made foods whether it be boxed cake mixes, specific seasonings mixes, or even powdered milk or mashed potatoes. This course made me reflect on food origins, cooking, and access. All of these books we read had fresh food and the means to cook it which is not a universal reality. I realized that not everyone has gas to cook on a stove and might need to make everything in the microwave, so pre-prepared foods are useful in this case. Food insecurity is something that I have never had to experience, but I think by looking at food origins and how leftovers have been creatively repurposed has made me grateful for the healthy, comforting association I have with food. 

Reflection from Grace: In conjunction with what Jae said, working in Cornell Dining, I’ve seen a lot of food practices that aren’t ideal. For example, we are forced to throw out trays of sandwiches and ready-to-eat foods that were almost at their expiration date. It feels so wrong that Cornell, such a wealthy and privileged institution, will rather willingly partake in active food waste than allow dining units to give away food to people who really need it. Food is a basic necessity and while it has been easy for me personally to overlook that fact as we talk about food in this class, reading all these texts and blog posts have shown me that one of the most important takeaways from this course is that we cannot look at food without also looking at the lack of it. 

Reflection from Maddie: I write this reflection after being rejected from multiple food related jobs, I write this after reading articles and hearing chefs discouraged and tired, and I write this because I am selfish and can only be uncertain where my food dreams lie. This class allowed me to view my possible career path through a literary lens rather than one of strict professionalism (which I previously had). Food is a necessity to all living beings but it is so easy for people to proclaim that they “love it” when in fact, they love eating it. Few are passionate about the process, the history, the details that go behind putting that sandwich on your plate or that pad thai you just Doordashed. Both Grace and Jae make valid points in focusing on the amount of food waste individuals produce. It is perhaps because we take it for granted and see it as a single entity. When our oral history interviewee mentioned that they gave a sandwich to a student who couldn’t afford it, it struck me that within the Cornell community, there are those who view food as sustenance and do not have access to it. It is a luxury for us to view food on a surface level yet this class pushed us to consider all parts of food on a human and cultural level.

That being said, we received a piece of criticism from an individual regarding our Nigerian fried rice post. To be completely transparent, when we had made the post we originally put “Nigerian Fried Rice” and touched on how it was different from jollof. The information we could find on this dish was limited and I was personally unfamiliar with it but it seemed that other members had more experience with the dish and we decided to call it jollof. However, a food blogger came to us and expressed that we had been inaccurate in representing that dish and wanted us to take it down. While this is disheartening, our “error” was not due to carelessness but different interpretations of such a dish. This speaks to what we find traditional, what can we identify it as as the blogger even expressed that this was her own interpretation of Nigerian fried rice and that we were false. This brings up a question as to how we can interpret food. We are not saying that she is wrong or that we were wrong because members did take a firm stance based off of their own experience which led us to such a decision. However, out of respect for the blogger, we deleted our post.

It is unfortunate that we had to end our blogging journey on a sore note, I feel uneasy because we had worked towards applying the ideas of food representation through our work and resulted in a social media frenzy that Grace respectfully handled. This is a further reminder that the challenges we mention in this class extend far beyond an educational realm.

Reflection from Myles: ASRC 3310 challenged me to put some frequent but overlooked thoughts into word and action. So often, and especially at such a developed institution, we as consumers can take for granted the labor of our service workers who allow us the time and sanity to deal with our own problems. To imagine the impact of this ‘invisible labor’ on our service workers motivates us as students to be more mindful of their struggle as they help us with ours, and we feel obligated to support them as they do for us. Tying this into the idea of archives, the concept that certain labor is recorded and therefore considered meaningful arises and, knowing the silences that occur as a result of axes of oppression, we can make connections between the labor of unrepresented groups, working-class people, etc. and our responsibility to bring visibility and awareness to the plight of our service workers. Furthermore, food is a necessity which has required the invisible labor of underrepresented people for all of history, in addition to the embodying intriguing genealogies of food products which have reached all over the world via globalization. The fascinating intersection between these concepts and the dialogue through which we explored these topics provided an exciting, educational experience during our class time. 

Works Cited

Du Bois, W.E.B. Dark Princess. 1928. 

Du Bois, W.E.B. “(1900) W.E.B. Du Bois, ‘To the Nations of the World.’” BlackPast, BlackPast, 28 July 2020, www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/1900-w-e-b-du-bois-nations-world/.

Hamid, Mohsin. Exit West. Riverhead Books, 2017.

Powell, Patricia. The Pagoda. Mariner Books, 1998.

Truong, Monique. The Book of Salt. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2013.

Tsian, H.T. And China Has Hands. Kaya Press, 2016.

Cafe Selina: Laura Kim, Leah Ham, Nikki Bregman, Sophia Su

Introduction
As Cornell students, how many of us take the time to think about the staff serving us food or cleaning our dormitory bathrooms every day? Those of us who are student employees may have the opportunity to interact with local Ithacans as our managers or colleagues, but how much do we know about their experiences and priorities? In our Instagram posts, we strived to convey a Cornell Dining employee’s thoughts about her occupation and her relationship with Cornell as well as the greater Ithaca community. The essence of our project is not to capture the entirety of one person but to serve as a conduit for her story, to highlight the complex and intersectional insights that underrepresented voices may offer.

Oral History
For our posts, we wanted to show the strong connection between oral histories and food. We spoke a lot in class about the archive, and different forms of the archive. It is our belief that oral history is a type of archive. Although it’s not physical, it holds stories from a variety of perspectives across multiple generations. It’s also much more common than we think. When you go to a family reunion, for instance, and you’re hearing that same story from your parent’s childhood for the hundredth time, that’s an example of an oral history. Oral history is a crucial method of passing down information that would have otherwise escaped the written archive, especially for traditionally marginalized groups.
For our oral history portion, we interviewed a dining hall worker that one of our group members has known for two semesters. There are no set rules or guidelines for oral histories, and since many can get very personal, we decided that it would be better to speak to someone who we are familiar with. We felt that it may be impersonal and rude to dig deep into the family history or the personal lives of someone that we have never met before. It would almost feel as if we were using them for the sole purpose of finishing a project. It was very important to us that our interviewee felt respected. To ensure this, we paid a lot of attention to the questions that we would be asking. We asked open ended questions that focused on our interviewee’s workplace experiences, such as the amount of control they have at work, as well as their personal experiences. We aimed to portray our interviewee as a whole human being, rather than a dining hall worker hidden in the background.

Recipe
One of our interview questions was if there was a recipe or ingredient that reminded her of home. She replied that banana bread was her favorite food of her household. Her grandmother used to make it for her, and now her husband has continued the tradition, substituting almond flour instead of the classic wheat flour for dietary reasons. Just talking with our interviewee we could tell that to her, feelings of love and interconnectedness were associated with this food. It was nice to get a snippet of the positive memories in this dining hall worker’s personal life. We knew immediately that the recipe for our cookbook chapter would be banana bread.
First, we decided that we would use the same flour that our interviewee used, as a sort of nod to her story as well as to give some of our audience a chance to try something new with a classic dessert. The chocolate syrup and cacao nibs we put in at the end were also a nod to her using chocolate chips in her banana bread. We also wanted to add our own unique spin to the recipe. After talking about those emotions of being with family at home that brought a smile to our faces during the interview, we came up with an idea. We would slice the almond flour banana bread after baking it and make French toast with the slices. Breakfast food has a very cozy feel, and we thought giving the recipe a breakfast spin would be a great way to physically represent those positive feelings. Writing out the recipe was challenging when it came to qualitative instructions. We asked ourselves questions like, “What is the clearest way to tell someone reading this recipe when the French toast is done cooking? Should it be by time or look?” The final product was beautiful and the direction we went for the recipe definitely paid off.

Research
Given that our chosen recipe features banana bread, we decided to trace the genealogy of the banana bread itself as well as its key ingredient — the banana. Bananas feature prominently in various readings for our Afro-Asia class: in The Pagoda by Patricia Powell, which takes place in tropical Jamaica, a Gros Michel banana is one of many gifts presented to the protagonist by locals (p. 135). In The Book of Salt by Monique Truong, banana leaves aptly tie the Vietnamese protagonist to his mother in a tradition of oral and culinary history: “…banana leaves, raw sticky rice, overripe bananas that no one else would buy, and my mother’s stories were the subjects of my everyday life,” (p. 80) the protagonist says. From the Caribbean to Southeast Asia, bananas are so widespread in Afro-Asian cuisines that its significance in discourse about Afro-Asia cannot be ignored.
Our research on the banana revealed that this familiar fruit is an infamous product of agriculture globalization and simplification. All bananas cultivated today, the majority in Central America (“Brief History of Bananas”), are genetically identical (Dunn). This practice of planting genetically identical bananas was promoted by the United Fruit Company in Guatemala on the Gros Michel strain of banana, which was wiped out by a parasite in the late 19th and early 20th centuries due to a lack of genetic diversity (Dunn). Instead of diversifying the banana crop in response to the situation, United Fruit commissioned the development of the Cavendish banana, which is resistant to the pathogen that had eliminated the Gros Michel (Dunn). Identical copies of the Cavendish, now dominating globally today, were planted en-masse much in the same way as its predecessor, with no guarantee of invincibility to future diseases (Dunn). The story of the banana unveils how a fruit that carries cultural significance across so many regions, beloved by people of African and Asian descent alike, is literally the same wherever it appears throughout the world. Nevertheless, this universal symbol is also extremely fragile, susceptible to extinction due to its inherent sameness. We believe the banana speaks to the global commonalities that connect nodes of Afro-Asia—the fragility of these connections suggest that we must celebrate diversity in addition to sameness.
The history of the banana bread shows that banana consumption has moved beyond tropical regions of Central America and Afro-Asian polities. The first banana bread is assumed to have been created in Greece, around 23-79 A.D. (Food Articles). Banana bread as we know it exploded in popularity with the increased availability of baking soda and the pressure of food shortages during the Great Depression (Bananamirte). Our interviewee even mentioned food shortages during her interview, and Covid-19’s impact on food shortages parallels the Great Depression mentioned in the history of the banana bread. Banana bread has humble beginnings, but its usefulness has kept it relevant throughout the years.

Design
After we talked to our dining hall worker, collected our research, and wrote our recipe, it was time to put it all together in the Instagram post. Our branding was Cafe Selina — Selina being taken from the first letters of our names and cafe referencing both the food element and specifically that we interviewed a manager at a cafe.
We wanted to exemplify the vibes of a cafe from the beginning — the sense of being warm and comfortable and at ease. We initially wanted a color scheme of a pale yellow to emphasize warmth and the hue of a buttery, flakey baked good. Once we settled on the banana bread, however, that yellow became bolder and stronger, incorporating both the warm feeling and the yellow of a banana. Our yellow was actually picked from a picture of a banana using the color picker tool. We paired that with a warm brown inspired by a cup of coffee from a cafe.
We created cohesive branding throughout our posts — we knew that our posts would be in the feed with all the other’s groups, and wanted to make sure you could easily pick out our group of 5 posts and say “oh yeah, those go together.” We’re really proud and believe we accomplished that, with the cohesive colors and template with “Cafe Selina” running around the edge. We chose to go with 1:1 square posts so that you can see the whole image from the grid. The picture instagram posts were created in Adobe Photoshop, using the Porter and Louis George Café fonts. The video posts were made using Audiogram with custom graphics created in Photoshop and uploaded to the site. We cut images out of their background and applied a layer style to create a stroke (a border) on the outside. When it came to the audio, accessibility was really important to us which is why we made sure we had captions, even though it was a lot of work to make sure the words were timed correctly.
We had to think about the best way to represent our interviewee given that she asked us not to video her or use her face. Even the way we described her was purposeful — we tried to be specific enough to give her the privacy she said was important while still giving viewers context. Images were really important because we didn’t want it to feel like we were forcing people to read a block of text. So we formed the text around the images, giving visual interest and breaking up the text.

Conclusion
Our research, content, and design choices are dedicated to conveying our interpretations of the meaningful interview we had the privilege of conducting with a Cornell Dining employee. We hope our presentation communicates how the themes of oral history and critical fabulation we discussed in our Afro-Asia class are relevant to the way we construe the existences of those around us, especially those we are tempted to overlook. Unfortunately, the word “overlooked” characterizes the narrative of Afro-Asia in a Western hegemonic context. Not only are individual stories of Africa and Asia often underrecognized, but the historical associations between Africa and Asia are even more neglected. By bringing attention to the importance of oral tradition for a member of an often unacknowledged group (staff members) at Cornell, we encourage the same approach for undermined Afro-Asian stories on a global scale.

Works Cited

“A Brief History of Bananas.” Pacific Lutheran University, https://community.plu.edu/~bananas/brief-history/
BananaMirte. “History Of Banana Bread • The Banana Bread Experiment.” The Banana Bread Experiment, Easy Banana Bread Recipes, 10 Apr. 2018, easybananabreadrecipes.com/history-banana-bread/.
Dunn, Rob. “Humans Made the Banana Perfect—But Soon, It’ll Be Gone.” Wired, 14 Mar 2017, https://www.wired.com/2017/03/humans-made-banana-perfect-soon-itll-gone/
“Food Articles, News & Features Section.” Banana Bread – History & Facts about Banana Bread, www.foodreference.com/html/artbananabrd.html.
Powell, Patricia. The Pagoda. Harcourt, 1998.
Truong, Monique. The Book of Salt: A Novel. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2003.

Hi everyone!

This post isn’t directly related to Afro-Asia, but I wanted to share a zine I found since it reminded me of the way we’ve been studying materials in all different mediums – literature, zines, art, music, food, etc. I came across an organization called Black Bird Revolt centering BIPOC activists to engage with communities and make change through design and art. They used to be based in my hometown, Duluth MN, but recently moved to St Paul. I follow them on Instagram and last month or so they published this zine that I thought was really well done, so I just thought I’d share it with you all! Honestly, before this class I hadn’t really heard of zines and I think they’re a really cool way to couple essays/poetry/analyses/stories with visual mediums like art/illustrations etc into a creatively cohesive piece. The link to check it out is below!

Seen Zine

Hi, everyone!

I hope you’re taking moments for rest and care during this crazy week. I thought I’d share an installation I worked on for another class this semester since we’re always contemplating digital spaces in this course.

Exploring themes of distance, contact, return, visibility, and ritual, this installation felt most suited for the digital realm not only for the content’s nature but also its reachability across physical spaces. I also recommend viewing it on a desktop! Thank you in advance for checking it out and don’t forget to sign the guest book and say hi!

You can access it here and the password is “expandedfield”

Hi all!

I hope everybody is staying well during this busy finals time! We’re almost to the home stretch and remember to stay hydrated.

I have a deep fascination for pottery/ceramics because of its utility. Something so delicate can enhance the colors, textures and even temperatures of the food that is being placed on it. Ceramics are an important part of East Asian history and are universal, characterized by color, various technique and material. My grandmother has had her own European style tea cup collection that has grown so large it has now been divided between my mother and her two sisters. On the flip side, my mother’s most prized possession is a large “moon vase”, symbolic of Korean pottery. However, much of the worth that is attached to such work is from the artist themselves. One can visually see distinctions between different sets of pottery but when we start to discuss who invented what technique, it becomes a bit murky. Not only that but in an increasingly globalized world, we have others who have become aware of such artistry. Adam Field is an American artist who traveled to Korea to study the art of the onggi a traditional Korean pot that is is used to store the soy bean paste and other condiments. However, I always wondered what brought him towards such a fascination to want to look at Korean pottery specifically. It brings to mind the question about cultural merging, cultural appropriation and such. This odd need to identify things and place them in limiting boxes.

http://www.adamfieldpottery.com/