Oppressed

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My love of eating and food became part of me as I grew up. Food was able to change my mood for the better in any situation. Angry, sad, nervous, excited, doubtful, if I ate I would usually be in a better mood within seconds after my first bite. When I’m angry, food can definitely be used to calm me down. With my love of eating, I soon discovered that food became the solution to fix or improve whatever mood I was in.

While I’m willing to eat anything, I’m not willing to mix any tastes together. Growing with my culture’s food, I never mixed sweet, sour or salty as I was growing up. As a result, I’m stuck with the mindset that breakfast had to be sweet and salty, but never mixed together. Lunch has to be salty, and dinner also. Never mix barbeque sauce with chicken when I know that chicken is normally a salty food. Am I a picky eater?

Wanting to eat food all the time, but never wanting to cook it (unless I absolutely had to), I developed a love for food from different cultures. Because I didn’t have much variety with food as a child, while growing up I longed for many different kinds of food. When I moved to the United States, I was able to be served without really caring about what went in the food. As long as it tasted good I would eat it. I completely ignore one side of food while enjoying the other.

My culture and my mother’s habit of cooking made me the person I am today. I became different from the Haitian image of an “ideal wife”. I refused to work hard while someone else is merely observing. I craved diversity in my food due to the uniform meals I had as a child. As I grew up, food became my best friend that was able to cheer me up or keep me happy whenever I needed it. Due to my experience as a child with cooking, constantly watching my mother slave over the stove while the men watched, I came to resent most of the rules that the women in my culture had to follow. As a result I became the one “the husband would send back for not knowing how to prepare a meal.” Do I mind? Not a bit, for food gave me the voice that I needed to tell my family that I was different from the average kids, and it made me into the person I am today.

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