Fried Chicken In a New Light
Greetings, my name is K.W and I currently taking the course Food For Thought. In this class we have been uncovering many things that are related to food. For example, we have watched many documentaries explaining how the food industry is corrupt and how much it has differentiated from its original stance. We have also read various texts that talk about the origins of food, and exploring how food impacts our everyday life. In addition, the class has helped me to understand how food relates to interpersonal, intuitional, internalized, and structural racism and oppression For this action project I was given the assignment of taking one of my favorite foods and create a cooking tutorial for that food and explain the history of the ingredients.
For my action project I connected my dish to a lot of the course topics from this unit. For example, the book How the Other Half Eats, and two poems that we have read during this course. In the text it states, “Julie had an abundance of opportunities for her kids while Nyah didn't, so Julie didn't have to use food as a daily buffer against hardship, Julie’s context also meant that saying no to junk food wasn't as emotionally distressing to her as a mother, what was one no in a light of a thousand yeses” 1634. This meant that Nyah as a mother couldn't provide that much for her children and food was one of the few things she could afford. “As I had seen how the human need to eat unites us, but the way that each of us meets that need pushes us further apart.” Fried chicken is a food that is derived from negativity and can be used as a social status which proves how this statement is relative to me. “Nyah navigated stigma and judgment simply for existing and raising her kids s the woman she was” chapter 7 This meant that Nyah fed her kids what she knew would make them happy because she could only give them so much, and this relates to me because I feel as though my mother rewards me with food too and that it may not be the best lifestyle everybody parents differently. “My mind wandered into the stereotypes portraying low-income moms unconcerned about their kids' diets” I feel like this is an example of interpersonal and internalized racism because the only reason low-income moms can't provide an abundance of nutritional value for their kids is because of the structural oppression that makes it hard to do so. Those are my connections to the book How The other Half Eats. These are my connections to the poems, ‘From blossoms comes this brown paper bag of peaches that we brought from this boy” - food brings new meaning and opportunities and can take something simple and make it into a lifestyle.
In conclusion, this action project was very difficult because I am not a good cook and this was actually my first time cooking fried chicken, and I am also not good with technology. Therefore, this made editing the video, taking the video, and everything of that nature difficult for me. If I were to go back and re-do this project, I would change the time I spent cooking and editing. Overall, this was challenging only because of the editing and technology aspect.
