Kitchens rivers
Dobel, J. Patrick
KITCHENS & RIVERS J.Patrick Dobel Metaphors for America Americans are always trying to figure out who we are. The current battles over multiculturalism and identity politics simply extend that...
...Our kitchens and rivers provide a key...
...One of my favorite dishes takes Alaskan halibut mingled with Italian garlic, Thai chili, and peanut sauce wrapped in a whole-wheat tortilla with a side order of mixed greens using cilantro and romaine covered with honey Dijon dressing...
...It is filled with wide, deep currents of distinct hues, speeds, temperatures...
...It is time to jettison both metaphors...
...Each time a new stream or tributary enters, the composition of the mainstream alters...
...Up close, the Missouri is a river of rivers, formed by a concert of movement...
...The stir-fried rice tasted of Caribbean spices, Italian marinated chicken, and fried sesame oil...
...And the river is replenished by rainfall from above, by runoff from fields and highways, and by subterranean springs...
...In homes across the land, millions of individual chefs experiment, cross boundaries, hybridize, create new dishes, and fashion new identities...
...Yet the metaphor nicely captures the dynamism of American life arising from the interactions of social and economic change...
...Some-times this never-ending renegotiation of Amer-ican identity revolves around metaphors...
...For starters, I would suggest two others, each of which offers a better balance be-tween the individual and the communal, and better reveals the joy, diversity, chaos, and order of American life...
...They embrace the tension between community and individuality while un-derscoring the energy and openness of life...
...But to me the image captures something quintessen-tial about American identity that emerges from the interac-tion of new tastes, colors, combinations, and textures, never before envisioned...
...Their achievement lies in the fact that their differences have not been obliterated but blended in juxtaposition...
...In Seattle, where I now live, the food-we call it cuisine-melds many different cultures...
...In them, we bet-ter become one...
...Each is useful but oversimplifies re-ality and has polarized the discussion...
...Each community or culture subsists in a complex and larger, multihued composition, yet each remains a segregated unit, hard and impervious as the proverbial in-dividual tile...
...Still, it is one, ever changing, ever complex, constantly recasting itself...
...America as mosaic has emerged as the preferred metaphor to the melting pot, especially for today's multiculturalists, identity politicians, and some communitarians...
...They work, mix, argue, love, fight, talk...
...Growing up in the Midwest, I watched the great Missouri as it flowed near my city...
...Its propo-nents argue that individuals come from distinct communi-ties and that their differences deserve respect as constituent elements of the nation...
...It enshrines a vision of individu-als as embedded in groups, perpetually strangers to outsiders, who are bound only by the forced cement of proximity...
...Think of it: Puerto Rican-Irish, Finnish-Filipinos, African-Poles, Jewish-Catholics, Mexican-Chinese, Methodist-Hindus...
...Thailand, Italy, Mexico, France, Alaska all rolled into one American meal...
...Beneath this view lies the moral claim that personal identities should be de-termined by their culture...
...Some streams disappear quickly into the enveloping larger river...
...This also helps explain why the mosaic metaphor fails...
...In the re-cent clamors over multiculturalism and identity politics, two metaphors have come to frame the debate: the melt-ing pot and a mosaic...
...The kitchens of America reflect this reality...
...American cuisine-with its hyphenated ex-perimentation and concoction of enticing new combina-tions-represents a truer identity metaphor than the melting pot...
...That image implies that cultures and communities exist as static, self-contained, impervious units...
...others form roiling eddies before finally joining in...
...Further, glazes seal off each stone from out-side influences...
...Nothing common exists between individual segments except the rigid mortar that maintains their sepa-ration...
...The first, in keeping with Virgil's insight, reminds us that the future of American identity lies in its kitchens...
...Upon entering, some of the larger tributaries remain seemingly intact for hundreds of miles, yet even here the eventuality of change is manifest in subtle differentiations of color, temperature, speed...
...Two years ago I had dinner in a New York City restaurant that billed itself as Cuban-Italian-Chinese...
...The image of the melting pot, popular since the great European immigrations of the last century, suggests that what-ever characteristics a given national or ethnic group brings to American life must be reduced by heat and melded into one gooey, indistinguishable mass society...
...We become a na-tional stew where nothing remains of the original individ-ual ingredients, and where distinct cultural identities are obliterated...
...An even more durable and noteworthy reality oc-curs when intrepid souls from various tribes meet, connect, love, form families, and raise children who represent new flavors, new possibilities...
...Each one forms new, evolving identities, not bound by molds, that would be unimaginable elsewhere...
...My other metaphor has to do with rivers...
...And in many American families, love binds and connects despite differences in race, culture, religion, geography, income...
...On the various channels' fluc-tuating boundaries, water molecules leach into the main-stream, changing its chemistry and altering their own...
...The current battles over multiculturalism and identity politics simply extend that debate...
...Since we Americans lack the foundational bonds of race, blood, religion, geography, and even long-enduring politi-cal covenants, we need metaphors to help define ourselves...
...I am thinking of a Great Northwestern Halibut Taco and The Big Muddy River...
...Mosaics can stun with their beauty and their power: their collage of colors and textures yields a majesty greater than the sum of the individual tiles...
...Some might call this metaphor a recipe for mongreliza-tion, even the ultimate debasement of distinctive national cultures...
...The attractiveness of this metaphor cannot conceal its prob-lems, however...
...We need new metaphors that better capture the moral and social reali-ties of American life...
...Our first such national identity metaphor was E pluribus unum...
...The new creations I am thinking of offer tastes that are not only distinctive but pleasing because they cohere...
...From high above, it resembled a broad brown ex-panse, meandering steadily through lush fields and past great cities...
...The food revealed a marvelous if impure mixture of fla-vors, identifiably Caribbean, Asian, Mediterranean, and profoundly American...
...It hints at the passionate forces that sim-mer beneath everyday life, and it reminds us that born iden-tities need not be forever: that we can come to share a new common destiny by virtue of physical proximity and a com-mon environmental, economic, and political future...
...It drew from the poet Virgil's description of a won-derful salad where all the flavors blend into one...
...In real life, people are thrown together...
Vol. 124 • February 1997 • No. 4
