Tanya Stanley

July 12, 2008

Culinary Nostalgia:  Misremembering the Menus of the Past

            What typically brings a family together?  Food, especially traditional cuisine of the past, brings families and extended families together.  When family members gather, memories of the past usually become the subject of intimate conversations.  My first research report focuses on nostalgia and the effects on immigrants resisting the dominant culture. Researching culinary nostalgia, a fusing of immigrants’ memories and their imagined pasts with an emphasis on cuisine, stems from my previous research of nostalgia.    I found Anita Mannur’s article “Culinary Nostalgia:  Authenticity, Nationalism, and Diaspora,” and wanted to learn the importance of ethnic cuisine for immigrants.  Prior to my research, I had never heard the term culinary nostalgia.  After reading Mannur’s article, I began to see a glimpse into culinary nostalgia by talking to immigrants and analyzing the seminar’s texts.  I thought about my own culinary nostalgia—the warmth of Salisbury steaks, an assumed favorite from my past—but I realized how salty those steaks are and decided I should leave the past unvisited and not try to relive the experiences.  Does culinary nostalgia bring the immigrant closer to assimilation into the dominant culture or push the immigrant into resistance, and does culinary nostalgia plague third-generation immigrants?

            After reviewing Mannur’s article, I discovered many immigrants desire for foods from their homelands.  Indian American culture critic Ketu Katrak states his “disinterest in food…was transformed into a new kind of need for that food as an essential connection with home” (Mannur 11).  Unlike the students I interviewed, Katrak is a first-generation immigrant.  The present overwhelming desire for a buffet of the foods once detested suggests a yearning for the immigrants return to their native country.  Food becomes an anchor weighing the immigrant’s progress of assimilation down because instead of the immigrant focusing on the future, they dwell on the past.  Nostalgia transforms the past from a horrendous piece of burnt toast into a five-star Cajun-style baguette.  

I interviewed two students from the University of Houston—Clear Lake’s Indian Students Association, and discovered many third-generation immigrants do not have a yearning for foods of the homeland which is expected.  However, they state their parents and grandparents attempted to make dishes of the past and were usually unsatisfied with the results.  When I introduced the concept of culinary nostalgia, the interviewees began to analyze their relatives’ responses of dissatisfaction.  Unfortunately, the students were able to respond with their parents and grandparents’ responses to culinary nostalgia.  Mark Swislocki, author of Culinary Nostalgia:  Regional Food Culture and the Urban Experience in Shanghai, suggests that examining food culture is an essential connection between the past, the present, and the future (Stanford University Press).  Many immigrants hold on to their past in their private lives while pushing the past onto their children and grandchildren.  Food becomes a bridge for the past and a roadblock to the future. 

Culinary nostalgia connects immigrants to their past while negatively affecting their future.  Culinary nostalgia, like nostalgia of a childhood, can cause serious problems for immigrants by coloring the past (12).  Culinary nostalgia can assist immigrants in resisting assimilation into the dominant culture because they emphasize the past and de-emphasize the future.  Culinary nostalgia does not seem to plague third-generation immigrants because they usually do not suffer from false memories—nostalgia—of the homeland.  Immigrants become more like minorities by living in close-knit communities surrounded by ethnic markets and restaurants—the sights and sounds of the homeland.  The effects nostalgia has on people intrigues me, and by focusing on cuisine—the communion of people—we witness one form of self-resistance immigrants can use when deciding to assimilate to the dominant culture or resist it.

Bibliography

Mannur, Anita.  “Culinary Nostalgia:  Authenticity, Nationalism, and Diaspora.”  MELUS 

32.4  (2007):  11-31.  Academic Search Complete.  University of Houston—Clear Lake Lib., Houston, TX.  14 June 2008.  <http://web.ebscohost.com>.

Personal Interview. 18 June 2008. 

Personal Interview.  25 June 2008.

Stanford University Press.  “Culinary Nostalgia.”  2001-2008.  7 July 2008.

< http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?book_id=6012++>.