Food and Identity in Modern America, Part 3: Connection to Heritage

Connection to ancestry and heritage allows individuals to understand themselves in the context of a people and a culture. In her introduction to the International Journal for Heritage Studies’ special edition on heritage and identity, scholar Fiona McLean reminds her audience that “it has long been held that heritage has ‘an identity‐conferring status’” (McLean 2006). Her article discusses several levels on which individuals derive their identity from their heritage. Heritage allows the individual to incorporate a national identity into his or her personal identity. By participating in a national identity, the individual is able to understand him or herself in the context of the larger “story” of the nation in which he or she lives. On a non-national level, heritage also places the individual within the story of an ethnicity and a familial line. The individual connects to each of these levels or components of identity through traditions and a feeling of belonging to that particular heritage. This connection allows the person to understand him or herself within the context of that heritage and incorporate it into his or her personal identity.

Understanding food’s ancestral and cultural origins and significance develops identity by connecting an individual to a heritage or a people. Individuals connect to their memories and heritage through eating the food associated with them. Different cultures often have traditional foods that bear special significance for their participants. For example, some countries relate their traditional foods to their national identities in phrases like “as American as apple pie” or “tan tico como el gallo pinto,” which is Spanish for “as Costa Rican as gallo pinto (the traditional breakfast dish of beans and rice).” In Mexico, special events such as weddings and quinceñeras are nearly always celebrated with mole (pronounced [mo’-lay]). Because it is traditionally eaten in these settings, the dish has developed a special significance for people of this culture. Use and understanding of foods in their traditional cultural context connects an individual to the culture and heritage from which they come.

The sum of all food traditions, customs, and meanings within a culture make up a distinctive “food culture,” and participation in a strong food culture helps shape personal identity. One of the most commonly cited examples of a thriving food culture is that of the Italians. In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver writes, “It’s my observation that when Italian genes are present, all others duck and cover. … After arriving on the ancestral soil I figured out pretty quickly why that heritage swamps all competition. It’s a culture that sweeps you in, sits you down in the kitchen, and feeds you so well you really don’t want to leave” (Kingsolver 243). According to Kingsolver, relationship with food in a strong food culture causes individuals to develop a strong sense of cultural identity. In her book The Earth Knows My Name, American Book Award winner Patricia Klindienst echoes these ideas using another example drawn from Italian food culture. The Pellegrinis are an Italian-American family for whom food signifies a deep cultural connection. Klindienst writes, “Food is not about fashion for the Pellegrinis; it answers a hunger for continuity. Food is a form of deep memory. Through food they are linked to their native landscape, to its soil, its water, and its trees” (Klindienst 145). Understanding the food one eats as coming from a specific ancestry or culture causes an individual to understand himself or herself within that context and incorporate that culture into his or her personal identity.