For various communities, connections to family often stem from cultural connections, including language, food, and traditions. It is common across cultures that tradition brings family together. Often, these traditions include food, which can create an integral aspect of how culture is shared, created, and passed along to other people in a community. Ntozake Shange and Verta Mae Grosvenor engage with cooking and food as a means of engaging with culture and passage of culture, as well as a way to find commonality between communities and various cultures. In particular, Shange focuses on the various communities in the African diaspora and the foods they eat and produce. Her work signals to ideas of connectivity, especially in the ways that the diaspora was able to create culture that was in many ways similar in taste, style, technique, and ingredients. However, the aspect of their works that I am curious about is how associations of food, cooking, and eating can infringe upon the passing of culture and connectivity of community.
Grosvenor, in particular, notes that “some people got such bad vibrations, that to eat with them would give you such bad indigestion”(xiii), highlighting that the food and the preparation of food is a vital part of the vibration she outlines, but that the outcome of that is also an integral part of that vibration. Thinking about food, how can who you eat with or how food is eaten change the way that food impacts a person or how it is passed down? I can think of the ways that food may be associated with negative people or memories and how that can make the food have a different impact on someone. For instance, there are foods that are associated with bad memories, maybe a food that made someone sick, or food someone ate when there was conflict at the dinner table and I wonder how that shifts the vibrations. This may highlight the ways that our physical and psychological qualities influence our food vibrations, impacting the ways that we understand culture and connections. If this negative association, whether it is natural or developed over time, can exist from bad vibrations food might separate people from cultures or communities with which they may be connected to in some way outside of food. I am curious if those negative vibrations be reversed and given new meaning, allowing connections to continue and grow despite these bad vibrations.
I like the connection you are making about how food and bad memories can have an impact on an individual. In class, we talked about the power food has to bring people together and is a form of healing but it can also be a continuous remainder of bad experiences. I know a person who had a traumatic experience with steak many years ago but til this day, he refuses to eat anything with steak in it. Though he does not mind sitting with people eating steak, he just won't touch it at all. For this and many other cases, I think food could have a psychological impact on people. Though I have personally always thought of food as a healer, a community former, etc, I haven't thought about the other effects certain foods may have on people who faced traumatic events with it. There's two sides to each story and I think thats the case for food as well. Different people, cultures and locations come together in the food put on the table, and the recipes that the food comes from. Shange claims this food culture, and history, as important, worthy of recognition, remembrance, and immortality in writing. I don't want to think that food has the power to tear people and communities apart, but I wonder if there have been any instances when that is the case.
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