Food Memories Part III.
Sometimes It’s Not That Great
Memories are fickle little things. They are varied, rich, and refutable. Two people can be at the same place, at the same time and have different memories of the same event. Memories only serve as your perceived truth + reality. I think that’s why we can either cherish memories or bury them in the back of our minds altogether.
Growing up I knew we didn’t have a lot of money, but I never attributed us to being outright poor. My mom and aunt did what they could to get us by month to month. Some months were better than others. I was definitely the kid who ate school lunch and had the school pack a lunch for when our class had field trips (always a PB + J, orange/apple, and milk carton). Middle school was hard when you’re allowed to go out for lunch + you only have $2 to buy food on the Upper East Side. $2 barely bought me much (this was the 90s by the way). Pizza was insanely expensive even in those days in that affluent neighborhood.
My middle school lunch diet consisted of Cup of Noodles, buttered rolls + bagels (cream cheese was a premium commodity), a trip to the best Chinese restaurant, Charlie Moms, around school where I shared a lunch combo with my best friend (only on special occasions when I had 3 or 4 dollars to contribute to splitting the $7 combo) + rice, beans, and meat in a coffee cup was all I could afford.
The rice, beans, + meat in a paper coffee cup was only $1 and was made by some Dominican ladies in a deli across the street from my school. I’d get this cup if I was super desperate. The meat was carne guisado, and the rice was white topped off with red beans. It tasted delicious, but my taste buds rejected this cup of REAL food for sustenance. I already had my fill of Dominican food every day at home. Rice, beans + meat. Repeat. Rice, beans, + meat. Repeat. Occasionally my mom and aunt cooked fettuccine with homemade alfredo sauce or random casseroles.
I was a skinny kid who was a picky eater. Let me clarify picky- I was picky about eating Dominican food. I was not here for tostones unless they were super thin and crispy almost like plantain chips. Did not care for the super fried and overcooked steak which Latinos seem to love. I rejected a lot of Hispanic foods unless they were deep-fried.
The more I moved and consumed the world around me (NYC really is the epicenter of all food and I took advantage), the more I looked down on Dominican food. I convinced myself that I was above it. Why eat rice + beans when I could be eating sushi, Turkish kebabs, Pho, Thai, + everything else under the sun? Why bother learning to cook arroz con gandules or morro when I don’t eat that kind of food at home? Whenever I visited family and was asked if I wanted a plate of food I simply shook my head and said I wasn’t hungry or just had eaten. I had equated Dominican food + cooking as low brow. It wasn’t “global” enough for me.
Now in my mid 30’s having traveled around the world, eaten A LOT of food, and still not really done eating my fill I’ve come to realize something about myself. Years of repressed memories of being considered other in the eyes of fellow Dominicans may have led to some of my aversion to the food that I didn’t care for. For years I lived in an identity limbo. I am 100% Dominican, but do not look “Dominican”. I’ve been asked my ethnicity so many times it’s become a joke in my own head. Eres Dominicana!? Y de donde? You’re Dominican? Where is your family from? As if telling this information will make me more Dominican.
I’m a dark-skinned woman with kinky coils on top of my head. I pass as African American, but never identified as such. Have been told I look East African and have been asked if I’m sure I’m not Ethiopian or Somalian. Yeah, I’m sure I’m not East African.
I’ve had Dominicans outright talk about me in front of my face in Spanish not knowing that I understand EVERY SINGLE WORD they’re saying. There’s a lot of racism and colorism in Latin America especially in the Dominican Republic where Blackness is left to Haitians. I’ve experienced A LOT of that racism to the point where my identity limbo has led me to just calling myself an Afro-Latina, so the specification of where my family comes from is never an issue.
More recently as I’ve been doing deep dives through closed vaults of trauma/memories with my therapist + through my own writing I decided to do something I should have done a long time ago, which is to reclaim my identity. I’ve decided to reclaim my identity by re-discovering the foods I shunned. I want to learn how to make a proper locrio or sancocho. I want to retrain my taste buds to like the foods I deemed “low brow”. I want to heal the cracks in the facade I see in the mirror when I think of who I am as a whole.
My hope is that my cookbook is going to be a documentation of these discoveries. So will this newsletter. I intend to use my writing not only to lift up my voice through cooking but also other Afro-Latinx people who melt into the background of culinary history in many Latin American countries because they’re too dark or too Black to be Latinx. Food can unite, heal, and do wonders for the soul. I know that it has for me and I hope that I can help others do the same.