Are We What We Eat? Food and Identity in Late Twentieth-Century ...

may work to construct a permanent identity through the process of assimilation, or a temporary one through the process of passing. From my perspective, assimilation—a life-changing process—consists of three parts: the psychological, the behavioral, and the social. In Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture, Werner Sollors details the psychological component, arguing that in order to assimilate, an individual must embrace the values of the group to which he or she hopes to belong. Sollors explains that one’s identities are formed not only through “descent” or those “relationships of ‘substance’ (by blood or nature)” but also through the process of “consent” or “our abilities as mature free agents and ‘architects of our fates’ to choose [our identities]” (6). To this end, he analyzes the “writing of and about people who were descended from diverse backgrounds but were, or consented to become, Americans” (7).⁷ In so doing, Sollors not only destabilizes the descent-based definition of “Americanness” that excludes anyone who is not white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant (WASP) but also suggests the possibility of assuming agency over one’s cultural identity, whether it be an identity that is considered “American,” ethnic, or a combination of both.⁸

To assume a desired identity, whether permanent or temporary, the individual must perform behaviors, such as the preparation and consumption of edible units of signification (in laymen’s terms, cooking and eating) that outwardly validate this choice. As Richard D. Alba explains in Ethnic Identity: The Transformation of White America, “identity must not be reduced to a matter of psychology, that is, translated purely into terms of self-concept and inner orientation” (75): “As important, if not more so, are the behavioral and experiential expressions of identity, its crystallization into concrete patterns of action and relationship” because “no matter how strongly an individual identifies with an ethnic background, if this identity is not reflected in action and experience, it makes little contribution to sustaining ethnicity” (75). To demonstrate this point, Alba refers to white European Americans,⁹ individuals similar to Peter’s parents in Black Dog of Fate, who privately and within their homes remain connected to their ethnic cultures