Borders
“I’d like to think that the lesson here is that we are all immigrants, that no culture is an island, that beauty is created at the confusing and painful boundaries between cultures and peoples and religions. I guess we can only look forward to the day when the battles we fight are about nothing more significant than where to go for ceviche.” Dan Jurafsky p 48, From Sikbaj to Fish and Chips.
No truer words read today. No truer words written years before the present of 2017.
This chapter is inspiring. Jurafsky holds your hand and guides you through a culinary, linguistic, and political retelling of a dish. From the earliest known sikbaj to present day incarnations. Every country has some form of fried fish and vinegar combination/ceviche variation. From beginnings in the fertile crescent to the bloody and violent shift to europe, then the even bloodier and more violent exploration of the americas. Through it all this dish has changed, adapted, and evolved with the tastes of the times and the peoples. Cuisine, like language, evolves. The boundary of what was and is can be hazy, often uncertain. It is elusive to say the least. It is truly a spectacular chapter and is worthy of your attention.
If nothing else take away what he has said. The tenuous conviction of your identity is built and rebuilt through battles and goodwill exchanged. You’re tethered more to your past than your present, and the walls you build shape the future not the truth of the past.
