From Embarrassment to Pride: One Mom Uses Mealtime to Preserve Her Family's Heritage

As a child, the food her mother made highlighted how different she was from her suburban classmates. Now, those flavors are part of her most precious memories.

Fact checked by Karen CilliFact checked by Karen Cilli

I still remember one of my very first sleepovers. I was 9 and a girl one year my senior moved into a house down the street of my Jersey Shore suburb. We bonded instantly—both of us chunky, curly-haired, anxious, and nerdy. We spent an inseparable first summer together, playing basketball on the street, annoying her little brothers, and having countless barbecues in her backyard. I loved spending time in her home. I loved the burgers and hot dogs cooked on the grill, the pizza deliveries her mom would surprise us with just because, and the mac and cheese dishes baked in the oven for extra crispiness.

When I invited my new pal over to spend the night, I felt excited and nervous in equal measure. I imagined it would be a stepping stone on our path to true best friendhood, which I welcomed. However, the differences in our home lives worried me. Where notes of maple syrup, mozzarella, and barbecue permeated her space, arroz con pollo, Goya Adobo, tajadas, and chicharrón perfumed mine. I felt embarrassed—fearful of being perceived as “odd” for my Colombian heritage and the culinary efforts my mother made to preserve our culture in an exceptionally white East Coast town.

It wasn’t the first nor the last time those fears popped into my developing mind. The foods served in friends’ houses fascinated me. I looked forward to eating fluffy pancakes rather than corn flour-based arepas or admiring the bunches of yellow bananas on their counters, which seemed so much brighter than the browned plantains on mine. It was rare that I would invite these friends to my own home.

As one of the only Latine kids in a school of hundreds, I knew I was different. I knew my mother’s accent might sound strange to my peers. I knew they were used to living rooms soundtracked by NBC or Comedy Central rather than reruns of Caso Cerrado. I knew the Spanish I spoke at home would sound like meaningless noise to their ears. Most of all, I knew the foods my mother lovingly prepared were entirely unlike those their parents whipped up.

It was the food—such a tactile, sensory experience—that filled me with the most panic. What if the scents brought itchy discomfort to my friends’ nostrils? What if the unfamiliar flavors made their noses wrinkle up? What if they spat something out, simultaneously offending my mother and mortifying me forevermore?

All that said, I was really bonding with my new friend. It wasn’t often that I felt so connected to someone. Already quite a socially anxious little thing, strong friendships were few and far between in my life. But I had told her all about my mother immigrating to the US in her 20s. She had heard me speak some Spanish. She knew I spent most of my vacations in Medellín.

Having moved to our town from New York, she was used to much more diversity than most of the kids I’d grown up around, and if anything, she seemed drawn to everything about me that I’d long thought of as “weird.” There were still voices in my head that wondered, “But what if she hates the beans and arepas and plátanos?” But there was a new voice as well that asked, “What if she doesn’t?”

The anxiety spirals I faced then are not uncommon for first-generation and/or mixed-race children whose home lives contain an element of culture outside of the broader one they are living in, confirms Family and Systemic Psychotherapist Dr. Natasha Nascimento, who herself grew up in Venezuela and is now raising children in the UK. There are ways to support little ones through them, though. “When a child may hint that they are uncomfortable about the food, or they may be avoiding inviting friends over, or parents notice their child wants to go to their friends' house but aren't bringing their friends home, they might need to validate their feelings and normalize it,” she tells Familia by Parents. “You can say, ‘I can see that you might be worried about your friend coming here. What would help you to feel less worried about it? What do you need?’”

If they don’t want to talk about it in the moment, you might suggest they try writing about their feelings or drawing a picture. As well as normalizing feelings of “embarrassment,” Dr. Nascimento feels parents might also try to “foster the idea that we are all different. We all have different ideas regardless and that is okay.” Embracing additional cultures within the home is important, too. “For example, we try to eat Japanese or Italian; foods from lots of different cultures, and then those differences are normalized.”

“One of the main things anxiety tells people is to avoid the situations that make them anxious,” Dr. Nascimento muses. “What I normally say is that you need to take control over the anxious feeling and then face the fear, which also helps grow tolerance for stress and is a life skill. Try to tell your child that if a friend comes to your house and sees it's different, it does not necessarily mean they are going to judge them. Don't assume the worst. They might even like it.”

In the end, I found my own ways to allow the aforementioned latter voice to take over, pushed through all remaining anxieties, and proceeded to have my first slumber party. My friend came over mid-afternoon on a Saturday, backpack on shoulders and sleeping bag in hand. My mother often prepped a week’s worth of meals over the weekend because she was so busy with work Monday through Friday, which meant there were plenty of options to go at—among them, lentejas a la criolla, arroz con pollo, and pasta con salsa de carne.

Remnants of worry prickled in my chest as my friend and I climbed onto our kitchen’s bar stools, a couple of heaping plates laid before us. I peeked over at my companion, wondering where we’d go from here if she hated everything she tasted. Amazingly, though, she was smiling ear-to-ear in between bites and quickly complimented my mother on a job well done. I still remember murmurs of “this is delicious” every time she tasted something new, and the relief and joy flooding through my own body as I enjoyed the foods I loved dearly while sharing them with someone I was coming to love dearly, too.

From that point forward, this friend came over to eat with us regularly. Over a decade later, after we had both moved away from home but reconnected on a trip back for Christmas, she told me how much being at my house meant to her. She spoke about how much she loved my mother’s cooking, how well-cared for she felt in our space, and how much having us in her life laid the foundations for a life full of experimenting, traveling, trying new cuisines, and embracing cultures beyond her own. Actually, quite a few friends from my high school years told me much the same as we got older.

As Dr. Nascimento agrees, this type of embracing and sharing of culture has tangible benefits. “When you grow up with a few different cultures, your brain becomes more flexible. You're more able to think about different perspectives and maybe empathize more with other people.

You're able to relate to other people in a different way. You might learn about history in a different way as well. You are also more open and curious about different cultures.”

Pushing through childhood embarrassment about “being different” on that first sleepover allowed me to be more open with future friends, and I honestly can’t remember a single one ever complaining about my mother’s cooking. On the contrary, they loved any Colombian dish they could get their hands on and my house became known as the place people went when they wanted to eat and eat well.

It’s only as an adult that I’ve been able to reflect on the work my mother put in to make these kinds of meals in a small town in New Jersey. Before the advent of online shopping, she would travel up to an hour away just to stock up on Milo, arepas of all varieties (choclo, yuca, blancas), Postobón Manzana, and queso costeño at the one Latin supermarket in a 60-mile radius. She would freeze the fresh arepas she bought there so we always had some for breakfast, whenever the mood called. She would bring a suitcase home full of nonperishables, like Triguisar, Juan Valdez Café, panela, arequipe, Supercoco, or Festival biscuits, whenever she’d travel back from Medellín.

The older I got, the more connected I felt to my Colombian heritage, often more so than my North American one, and I don’t doubt for a second that a big part of that stemmed from the efforts being put at home to keep us close to our Latinidad.

Now as a mother to two little girls, raising them in an English-speaking country much like the one where I grew up, my mother’s parenting goals have become mine: I want to preserve our culture. My children may only be one-quarter Colombian, but that quarter means so very much to me. I want to soundtrack my home with Shakira, speak to them in the language I spoke in my own childhood, place digital orders for arepas and queso costeño and chorizo Colombiano, and travel to the nearest city just to buy fresh plantains.

When it comes to food, my daughters are as picky as any 5- or 7-year-old, but these days they will often at least try things. They may not always like them, but I believe that in time, they might. So far, I’ve had the most luck with arepas de choclo at breakfast (the sweetest of the cornflour pancakes), chorizo Colombiano, and of course any and all Colombian sweets (Bon Bon Bun’s, Supercoco’s, or Jumbo Jet among them). The tajadas I have cooked have sadly been hit or miss. They have always disregarded my arroz con pollo. Still, I try to place a digital order every month or two for arepas, cheese, chorizo, and sweet treats from a Latine market that delivers groceries overnight; and when I finally get them to Colombia to visit the girls’ extended family and connect them with their roots, I imagine they will recognize at least some of the dishes my tías or primos prepare.

Sometimes it can feel impossible to bring one’s culture into the home while living in a foreign country, especially if (like me) you’re living in a town with minimal Latine community. Finding ways of cooking the foods that I loved as a child has been one of my favorite methods, though. Like so many Colombians, the act of preparing a meal and sharing it with your nearest and dearest is a love language. It’s one I will shower my daughters with as they grow up—and hope that maybe, just maybe, they do the same for their own people someday.

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