HERITAGE LEADERSHIP*
Food as a Conduit for Social Bridging and Repair
Adrian Boone's nephew (left), son (middle), and niece (right) wait for their freshly picked green coconuts to be cut open to drink the coconut water and eat the coconut meat. Photo by Adrian Boone.
Thank you to our contributing authors: Adrian Boone, Britt Tate, Darius Williams, Chris Schott, and Theresa Coble
*The posture of a heritage leader is one of cultural humility, a readiness to rebalance power dynamics, and reciprocity.
Discussions about how to interpret foodways often elicit stories about the power of food, foodways, and food heritage. Theresa Coble and Chris Schott, co-leads for the Heritage Leadership department, create a space for thinking and writing about the interpretive topic for each Legacy issue. The process always begins with one or more deep conversations that delve into the topic—and lots of playful banter.
For this issue, they are joined by three former students—now doctors—who each conducted research on a topic related to foodways and food heritage: Drs. Adrian Boone, Britt Tate-Beaugard, and Darius Williams. Their stories provide a jumping off point for a discussion about interpreting foodways to foster social bridging and repair.
Adrian Boone witnessed a school-aged child take their first ever bite of poi-mashed up taro root, at a Earth Day event he helped coordinate at a public charter school in Hawai'i. As they ate the poi, he saw their eyes get big as they smiled, and realized how good it tasted, connecting them back to their Hawaiian culture.
Britt Tate Beaugard works at an elementary school in St. Louis with a largely immigrant student body. Recently, teachers learned that parents were afraid to shop at culturally relevant grocery stores because of actions taking place nationwide that target immigrant community members. Britt and her teacher colleagues sprang into action, shopping for and delivering groceries to school families so they’d have access to their traditional foods. Foodways sustain culture and connection.
Darius Williams works with an entrepreneur who owns a tea company. She was struggling to get a loan, struggling to take her company to the next level. He helped her learn how to interpret her products to customers, including her soursop tea. A young man had a severe allergic food reaction. While en route to get his EpiPen from his backpack, he took a swig from a bottle of her soursop tea. The reaction immediately subsided. There was no need to use the EpiPen, no need to go to the hospital. Now this brilliant entrepreneur tells stories to help people understand the restorative properties of the soursop leaf. Food is medicine and healing.
Chris Schott is a professor in English with an emphasis on science communication and writing at the University of Missouri - St. Louis. He grew up in a rural, homogeneous environment where food was viewed through a functional and pragmatic lens. Since then, through global travel and the active pursuit of culinary adventures, Chris has cultivated his tastebuds and broadened his palate. But his experience illustrates the low exposure starting point that many people bring to food and cuisine. From a low-exposure starting point, food experiences can transform worldviews.
Theresa Coble taught English at a teacher’s college in China in the 1980s. Within a month of arriving on campus, a truck pulled up and sold live chickens to faculty and staff. It was as if a festival came to town! People happily chatted on the sidewalk while chickens with their feet bound together hung upside down across bicycle handlebars. Human conversation and the clucking of chickens commingled. Theresa told herself what would later become a mantra for new experiences in China: “This is normal.” Then she reflected, when you don’t live on a farm, and you don’t have refrigeration in your campus housing, two live chickens is a feast. If you let it, food can break down cultural barriers.
Adrian's son Keanu, at 1 year old, poses with their fresh calabasa squash harvest. Photo by Adrian Boone.
Foodways Are a Conduit for Social Bridging
Adrian
I grew up in Hawai'i. I'm not Hawaiian, but I say I'm Hawaiian at heart. I view food as very integral to culture and day-to-day life. When you throw a party in Hawai'i or in my wife’s Filipino culture, you start preparing two or three days beforehand. You might go out and pick wild fern shoots to make your fern salad, which is a kind of a delicacy. Or you might dig your underground oven, which is called an imu in Hawai'i to put your pig in. You have to do that a day or two beforehand because it takes 24 hours for the pig to cook underground—and you toss in taro, sweet potatoes, and often breadfruit. And then you have a big party and the food has a really good smoky flavor to it.
Chris
Adrian, what you just described is about preparing food, for sure. But it’s also about connecting with land, culture, and history. It’s about connecting with each other. In 2016, Danielle Allen wrote about connected societies. She said that social connectedness emerges when “bridging ties, across lines of difference, are formed at a high rate.” For this to happen, people must participate in bridging activities like potlucks and BBQs. I think meaningful moments with food can happen as people try to connect to their own or other cultures. Food can serve as a very accessible conduit for people wanting that kind of connection.
Adrian
Coming to the mainland from Hawai'i, I definitely seek eclectic experiences. We might go to the In-N-Out Burger, but we also aim for balance. We're often eating Mexican food; or, we have a good Korean place that we like. We're not Korean, but we love Korean food. We've embraced it because you get to taste all these different flavors. It's almost like you get every flavor in that meal because you get all the little banchan, the little side dishes like kimchi and pickled vegetables.
A traditional Filipino feast is laid out on banana leaves for friends and family of Adrian. Participants eat with their hands, connecting them closer to their food. Photo by Adrian Boone.
Adrian's son Keanu, at 8 years old, tends to a school garden bed he helped to install. Photo by Adrian Boone.
Darius
Food is storytelling. Food links us to powerful memories. Food gives us opportunities to learn. Adrian, you mentioned Korean food, and Korean barbecue is an amazing communal experience. You're cooking your own food. But in that moment, the act of cooking forces us to think culturally or conversationally about why we chose to eat there. Ultimately, we want connection and experience with food that is culturally defined. During a recent outing, this led to a conversation with my son when he asked: “Dad, why are you using chopsticks?” And so it's this moment where conversations are happening, and nothing’s forced. It's just good questions and curious minds.
My family talked with the Korean server. We asked cultural questions about noodle types and what flavor palettes come out of the miso soup versus a creamy soup. These questions opened up opportunities beyond the meal itself to talk, learn, and invest ourselves in other people and cultures.
Britt
These moments of engagement seem small, especially when they involve casual conversations, but they are vital to deriving the full benefit of experiences that go beyond a surface-level celebration of culture and food. A question for interpreters to look at seriously is how might they help audiences move beyond surface-level engagement, cultivating authentic food experiences, and connecting meaningfully with the foodways of diverse global populations.
Theresa
Those deeper experiences feed our stomachs, but they might also fuel our appetites for social healing. Because food brings people together, it’s a potent ally in the process of social repair where we mend tears in the social fabric, rebuild broken relationships, and heal the wounds caused by division and exclusion. In her book Trauma Stewardship, Laura van Dernoot Lipsky explores strategies to help those in the helping professions prevent burnout and preserve their mental health:
High school students participate in a business workshop/training at the North County Innovation Center. Their goal is to become entrepreneurs across diverse industries and sectors. Photo courtesy of North County Innovation Center.
…too often, suffering does go unnoticed and unattended. Still, people who are working to help those who suffer, or who are working to repair the world to prevent suffering, must somehow reconcile their own joy—the authentic wonder and delight in life—with the irrefutable fact of suffering in the world.
Perhaps relishing food and diverse foodways would allow interpreters to cultivate their own joy while also nourishing conversations across the table, over a shared meal?
Creative entrepreneurs pose for a photo at the North County Innovation Center after completing a paint event that echoes the art of Ferguson in 2014 (after the Michael Brown shooting). Photo courtesy of North County Innovation Center.
Foodways Are a Conduit for Social Repair
Darius
At the North County Innovation Center, we’re working with a Black-owned business led by a baker who specializes in lactose-free desserts. She is currently working to move to their first brick-and-mortar location. A lactose-intolerant colleague of mine was given a lactose-free cheesecake for the first time in over 20 years. The joy on his face told the story of someone who was experiencing love and healing in real time. He got a chance to taste something he had longed for for so long.
These are the moments that have to happen, both for consumers and producers of food. Because food is a cultural platform, right? It’s important that Black, Brown, and women-owned businesses have an opportunity to create more cultural platforms. It’s a way to solidify cultural identity in community spaces that is so beautiful and necessary. It also helps to break down the barriers and the reality of systemic injustice in our community as well.
Britt
I found myself using food as an approach to strengthening literacy skills for my students. With so many many different cultural backgrounds and languages being spoken at school, I wondered how we could get kids working toward their goals of reading and writing in English. I asked, “What brings everyone together in this building?” The answer was simple and straightforward: food. So I thought, what if we published a school cookbook? What if families gave us recipes from their cultural cuisine?
Before you knew it, we were creating a cookbook with recipes that required translation from 26 languages into English—but we also shared all the recipes in their original language. We used QR codes that clicked to images of recipe cards written in Arabic or to audio-recordings of a parent narrating their recipe in their original language. We had to share audio recordings because Google translate and other translation programs don't work for K’iche’ (an ancient Aztec language). It was an extraordinary effort that put equity and representation front and center. We found that through inclusive storytelling, food can be a conduit to connection and facilitate authentic cultural engagement.
Chris
Britt, you collaborated with all these people to make your cookbook as close to an accurate translation as possible. In literature, we understand that language translation operates on a word-to-word level. But an important part of translation is capturing the feelings and emotions and providing access to the deeper connotations of the ideas being expressed. People who do translation work in literature are tasked with retaining the relevance of the statement as much as retaining its phrasing. Your project required massive code switching to make it work. So that begs the question: Is code switching the price of admission for respectfully engaging with diverse foodways? And how can interpreters help audiences build that code-switching capability?
A student-created mosaic of Jayson Tatum created by 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders used a variety of popular candies that were hot-glued onto a canvas and covered in resin. Photo by Britt Tate.
Fourth graders hot-glued sorted candies to create color-blocked images of Saint Louis icons of Black History. Photo by Britt Tate.
Taro plants grow in a traditional wetland taro patch in Kīpahulu, Maui, in Haleakalā National Park. Photo by Adrian Boone.
Adrian
In Hawai'i, there are efforts to revive Indigenous food crops like taro root to reconnect children to ancestral food traditions. For my dissertation research, we interviewed a farmer from Hawai'i who said, “When Hawai'i was colonized, the first thing they did was take away the native Hawaiian language. The second thing they did was take away their food.” Ka’iana Runnels works at the Kohala Farm Center. He’s trying to get Hawaiian people to eat traditional Hawaiian food, but he’s running into a problem. “When you don’t eat traditional food, you lose your taste for the food,” Runnels said. “When you know your food, when you get to taste your traditional foods prepared in traditional ways, it’s a return to your culture.”
Taro root is a major crop in traditional Hawaiian culture. With fish and other garden produce and a barter system, taro sustained a million Hawaiians pre-colonization. A million people is the population of Hawai'i today. Currently, 90% of the food Hawaiians eat is imported into Hawai'i. So Ka’iana Runnels is trying to get more local food into schools. He’s introducing school kids to eat poi which is the name given to mashed up taro root. At one point I organized an Earth Day event at a public charter school on the Big Island. We had a demonstration and taught kids how to mash and pound taro into poi. And you know, when school kids cooked and mashed taro root to make poi, following the traditional practices, and took seeds home to plant, it was like a renaissance of Hawaiian culture. It was very moving to be part of that experience.
Theresa
The examples y’all have raised hinge on exposure to new people, new foods, and new cultures—and I agree, newness, unexpectedness, and surprise undergird many meaningful experiences with food. However, I’m wondering whether monotony can also play a role?
I was in northern China for four years. Eating seasonally was an experience that left a huge impression on me. Winters lasted many months in Shandong Province and eating cabbage, potatoes, carrots, and onions day after day, week after week, led to a kind of culinary monotony that I hadn’t experienced before or since. But, over time, that culinary sameness made me feel closer to the land, the farmers, and the agricultural cycles that I witnessed in the surrounding countryside. Perhaps it was that experience that nudged a suburban girl to become an avid urban gardener? Home-grown food can foster a deep sense of connection to seasonal growth cycles. It’s a kind of unexpected, even ancient gift.
Teacher-created decor for an elementary school library. Photo by Britt Tate.
Sometimes Foodways Stand Witness to Our Social Relations
Chris
Food can be a conduit for social bridging and repair. It brings people together like few things can. Food can be a catalyst but it’s not a panacea. Foodways develop within social groups. And members of the social group have to be willing and open for social bridging to occur. Social repair may be elusive and opportunities for social bridging may be few and far between.
Theresa
Chris, in the March/April issue of Legacy, we worked with Ben Gall on an article titled “The Fine Art of Interpretive Reduction.” Ben manages five historic sites in Saint Charles County, Missouri—just across the Missouri River from St. Louis. He wrote a compelling piece of interpretive writing that illustrates how foodways can stand witness to the state of our social and ecological relations. Let’s conclude this article by sharing Ben’s insights on foodways and bearing witness. Sometimes social repair requires standing in your own truth while giving what you have to enliven those around you.
Farmers market. Photo by Adrian Boone.
The Witness Tree
By Ben Gall
Is there an item that could serve as a witness to your life? A teddy bear? A blanket? A photo album? A recipe?
The Boone Home—where Daniel Boone lived and died—is three miles down the road from the Hays Family Home in Defiance, Missouri. Daniel Boone and William Hays were business partners, and William married Daniel’s daughter Susannah. There’s a Black Walnut tree (Juglans nigra) that has stood watch for 200 years on the property where two Missouri families came together to amass their hardscrabble fortunes.
Black Walnut is a North American hardwood tree that used to grow widely throughout Missouri. Walnut trees produce nuts in an intermittent and synchronized fashion, a phenomenon known as “mast seeding.”
When this Walnut Tree and her siblings dropped their nuts, the nuts were a bountiful gift for the Hays family and people whom they enslaved. Walnuts could be turned into ketchup or ground up to be used as flour or a thickening agent. It was used in woodworking. Often, it was stored away to be eaten in lean winters. For the enslaved people on this property, walnuts likely supplemented their sparse diets. Black children between five and ten years old may have spent hours scouring the ground for healthy walnuts.
This Walnut Tree has witnessed successes and tragedies. She witnessed Daniel Hays return from the War of 1812, after fighting under Nathan Boone’s command. She witnessed Daniel and his wife Polly lose six of their eleven children. She witnessed a nation torn apart by the Civil War as questions raged over slavery. In 1862, while in winter dormancy, she witnessed a 28-year-old enslaved Black woman named Ann free herself from bondage by running away. Ann may have stashed away extra walnuts to provide food for her journey.
For two hundred years, the Witness Tree’s seeds have been scattered across this stretch of land. In the coming decades, her walnut offspring may not survive. The ideal temperature for walnut trees to reproduce is 70 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit (21.1 to 26.7 degrees Celsius). With earlier, longer, and hotter summers, the time window for pollination is shrinking. Scientists hypothesize that, in the future, walnut trees will only be viable in more northerly climates.
How have you provided sustenance for others?
A 200-year-old walnut tree that Ben Gall refers to as “The Witness Tree,” stands sentinel at the Hays Family Home in Defiance, Missouri. Photo courtesy of Kami Ahrens..
Thank you to our contributing authors.
