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alatismeni-theitsa · 3 years ago

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I have no idea when you posted asking about the experiences of Greek diaspora / Greek heritage but I just saw it so I thought I’d send in my stuff.

I am so disconnected from it because my grandma didn’t want to pass the language into her children so she could have adult conversations they wouldn’t understand. And she didn’t pass on the culture because her husband was Jehovah’s Witness. And so I just feel an intense feeling of grief over a culture that I’m apart of but know very little about. I have some recipes my Yiayia made, a cookbook by women from the Greek Orthodox Church in NYC, and two lullaby’s. (We lived in the US with my great grandma so we had more interaction with Greek culture than our cousins who’s lived with my grandma in Ireland)

And there’s not much out that I’ve found where I’ve been able to learn about my culture and not felt like I’m intruding. Especially because I don’t “look Greek” like some of the other greek kids at my school. I look Irish. I don’t have a Greek name and I don’t speak any of the language. The only way I’ve found to connect is through food but I’m limited to the cookbook because if you look online it’s hard to find recipes that aren’t just trendy mediterranen inspired health food. My mum is starting to reluctantly tell me a little about my family from Greece. And my grandmas cousin and her family is very very greek. So if I fly down to see her she’ll teach me stuff (though she’s the matriarch of the family so she’s pretty intimidating). Anyway. That’s my experience with my my greek heritage.

I just sent the long-ass ask about Greek heritage but I forgot the bit where I was Greek enough to get bullied over Greek food. Yay. Dolmades are good though I don’t care if they “look little poop”

___________________[END OF ASK] __________________________

Hey and sorry for the delay 💙 I asked some time ago but that doesn't mean newer answers aren't welcome anytime!

Dear, I am grieving with you for the loss 😔 I can't say the reasons the language wasn't passed on seem very logical to me. There are things that didn't get passed on to me because my grandparents thought I would automatically know, or they didn't bother teaching, so I can relate to that feeling 😔

You are definitely NOT intruding! I can understand why it feels this way after what you told me, but it seems to me you have every right to know! Greek culture welcomes anyone from Cameroon to Japan, so, realistically, nothing should stop you from having access to it. Plus, it's your own family!

Oh damn, the "I don't look Greek" plague 😩 As everyone knows there's no specific qualifier of appearance for being part of Hellenismos. On this particular occasion, I'll go one step further and say that, unless you have raid hair, you probably look like a lot of Greeks.

There are Greeks whose appearance is rare for this ethnicity, but "looking Irish" is a thing that 1/4 (at least?) of Greek people relate to. One thing Greeks of diaspora often hear is that "they don't look Greek enough", aka they look "too white". Your surrounding Greeks might not look like you but if you go through my tag #Greek people, which has hundreds of videos, portraits, and photos of Greeks from all eras, you might realize you look like many Greeks.

Again, appearance doesn't matter in the slightest when it comes to culture, but I sensed your appearance issue was the flavor of "too white looking" and it's the most infuriating thing to me because many, many Greeks look "too white looking" for the standards foreigners have made for them!

Anyways, on to the food! I am so happy you are trying some of the recipes :D (And that you are doing everything to connect to your heritage if it brings you joy!) How dare they speak badly about dolmades??? 😭 Many countries close to Greece also have that dish and we must find them so we can have a dolmades alliaaaaanceee!

I'd also like to add, don't feel pressured to get too much into the culture if you don't want to. Many Greeks in Greece keep different types of distance from their tradition and that should also be your right. Again, do and learn whatever pleases you! Just keep in mind that you are valid in your current state without going the extra mile to learn every Greek thing possible.

People across the globe can have various degrees of Greek heritage and if that "amount" of heritage is "less" then it's okay and natural because it's what happens when people immigrate. The more generations pass, the more this old part is left behind. For example, many Greeks in Greece can also come from other backgrounds (Austrian, Egyptian, Slavic (various countries), etc) and they, too have many parts of their older heritages lost. They practice Greek customs almost exclusively now.

There's a cultural plane that shifts all the time in countries around the world and families assimilate to a new culture as they adapt to a new place. At this moment you are also part of a US regional culture and there is no shame in *also* identifying as part of it. That won't erase any Greek part of you.

The above doesn't aim to discourage you in any way on searching more about Greek culture! It's only a general disclaimer. People from inside a culture (usually in diaspora) tend to judge those who participate less, as if any person with X heritage is in a place to keep the same amount of touch with it 🙄

Sure, tradition is very important but nobody should be forced to practice it if they don't want to - or if they just can't. Tradition is people, and some traditions change or die naturally because many individuals from the inside wanted it to.

It's hard being caught in between - not "American enough" and not "Greek enough". The paradox is that you must first feel secure in this position. Granted, it's easier said than done but mentally it will save you the mindset of needing to be "more American" or "more Greek". As you understand, you don't need to feel apologetic to Americans for who you are, and you don't need to feel apologetic to Greeks in America or anywhere else for the exact same reason.

Some Greeks of diaspora feel distressed about their accents in Greek (or they don't want to admit they have an accent) or for not being perceived as Greeks automatically by other Greeks when they visit the country. But that's unavoidable because these differences exist and people raised in Greece can spot them. Therefore, people in the US whom you are afraid might feel superior to you for knowing more things about Greece, may come to Greece and feel like foreigners.

So they shouldn't make this a race beacuse it's not one they would normally "win" by their own standards. Chances are, after you learn anything you can, you will also have distance from what is considered the "default" Greek culture. It's part of the organic process of time + distance from the country, and Greeks with half a brain won't look down on you for that.

What I mean to say is that there is no certain bar an ordinary person can ever pass to be given any prize of the "ultimate Έλληνας". Not even Greeks in Greece know where that bar is when it comes to their own touch with tradition. There is no golden standard, no finishing line!

I encourage you to continue your journey on learning Greek things and while you are at it, know that objectively you have nothing to prove to anyone, even though you might feel otherwise. I say, fly to your grandma's cousin and let her teach you stuff!

You know that the intimidating demeanor Greek aunties and grandmas have doesn't necessarily reflect their love for you. You might also know that older Greeks are more reserved in showing appreciation. And in the hypothetical scenario where they don't really like you that much, they are still bound to you because you are family, so feel free to use their expertise 👀 If they don't give their knowledge to their family, whom are they going to give it to?? The neighbor??

If they throw any shade at you for now knowing enough take a deeeeeep breath, remember this isn't a race, and continue learning from them. (And you will feel the Greek experience of not deemed worthy enough by your relatives 😂 It's a win win!) If you haven't, check the poem Ithaca by K.P. Kavafy! I think it applies to this situation in a way!

You can always come here and browse thousands of posts about Greece! (In the Desktop version the most important show up on the left of the main page). I have #modern Greece #Greek custom #Greek tradition #Greek dance #Greek cuisine #Greek literature and whatever else your heart desires!

If you want to slowly learn Greek, Greekpod 101 and Easy Greek channels on YouTube have great content! I also have my tag #learn Greek on this blog with sources and explanations. (#Greek language and #Greek word can also be useful!) They are all accessible to English speakers!

You now have a distant Greek auntie who is at your disposal for any type of question (even the "stupid" questions)! Literally, ask me anything and I will try to answer it or find more info for you! You can DM me if you don't want to leave an ask. You are not intruding and it's my pleasure to help!

#thank you for your message <3 #it's hard for me to give tone in text - i hope i wasnt too intimidating either :p #the blog is here for your questions about greece so dont hesitate to ask!#answered #greek diaspora #greeks in the us #greek speaks

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script-a-world · 5 years ago

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I really want to create new foods and recipes for one of my worlds, but I have no idea how I would go about doing research for something like that. Do you guys have any resources or advice that might help? To be more specific for this world, most ingredients are incredibly low quality (but they are in abundance) and any imported ingredients are only used for the rich. I was thinking their food would use a lot of seasoning to mask the quality, but I'm not too sure. Thank you!

Feral: We could actually do with a few more specifics to answer this question as fully as you would probably like, but I’ll do the best I can.

First, I’m not sure whether you want to create recipes using real world ingredients that would in fact be cookable to release on your blog as some kind of companion for your audience or you want to conceptualize some recipes to be able to describe taste, texture, etc. If it’s the first option, creating recipes from scratch is pretty difficult. You might want to consider taking some cooking classes to learn techniques, reading cook books for a lesson in combining ingredients, and doing a lot test cooking to nail down the flavor profiles. If you don’t want to go completely chef-y, you could also take recipes and then tweak them by substituting an ingredient or using a slightly different technique (baking instead of broiling, etc). This would also be helpful in the second case. If by "low quality" you mean "low cost," try looking at food preparation that developed in poorer, underprivileged, or minority communities, like American immigrant cuisine and soul food (the original styles, not the bougie, hipster, “elevated” styles).

For example, understanding how immigrant cuisine differs from motherland cuisine can be particularly helpful in determining how your world’s “rich” food can be adapted into “poor” food. In America we often think of corned beef and cabbage as being a traditional Irish food, but in reality, no one in Ireland really eats corned beef and cabbage - it’s a traditional Irish-American food because poor Irish immigrants could not afford the lamb they would have eaten at home (which was more readily available in say rural Ireland than in New York City and therefore at an affordable cost), and they often could not source any bacon or cured pork products because the butchers who would sell to them were often the Jewish immigrant butchers. So, the cheapest cut of cured meat they could get was corned beef and replaced the traditional proteins they would have used at home.

Second, I’m working off the assumption that your world has the same ingredients as we do, but it’s unclear. When you mention creating new foods, that could mean food preparation or it could mean edible plants and animals. If it’s the latter, then the easiest way to do it would be crossing real world things.

So, for example, everyone’s favorite vegetable on your world may be a cross between a cucumber and a lemon (the flesh is cucumber like but grows in segments in a thick skin that wouldn’t be eaten straight but could be zested, and the flavor is like a very watered down citrus). This also gives you the ability to create recipes by using the two ingredients you crossed.

Also, I’m assuming that you’re using actual food rather than powders and extracts (very common in scifi settings where "real" food is incredibly scarce), which I don’t have too many ideas on how to create recipes that way. Firefly has a pretty good method of just obliquely referring to “protein powders in every color” and showing cans of things but only really showing food prepared and being consumed when it is in fact real food provided to the crew as payment.

Finally, seasoning is a good way to hide low quality ingredients, whether it’s a cheap cut of meat or slightly wilted vegetables. Especially sauces. Especially, especially cream sauces (providing that milk of some kind is one of the ingredients generally available). Sauces make spices go further. Also, keep in mind preservation techniques (salting, smoking, drying, pickling); in the real world what has often made something the “cheap” version is that it is preserved and not fresh (with the common exception of salted foods when salt is an expensive import). But those preservation techniques also infuse additional flavors into the food.

And speaking of the real world - have you ever heard that England conquered most of it in search of spices and then decided it wasn’t going to use any of them? Spices were the purview of the very very wealthy for a very long time. The common folk did not have much access to anything they couldn’t grow in their own backyard. So, the working class dishes we commonly associate with England are not particularly spicy. As you’re deciding how the poor disguise the low quality of their food, whether it's less costly trying to appear more costly or slightly less fresh than one would prefer to eat or whatever, keep in mind what they are able to grow in the soil and climate they have (spices are typically tropical while herbs are more often temperate).

A helpful guide in food experimenting:

Cook Smart: How to Maximize Flavor Series

Part 6: Guide to Adding Flavor with Aromatics

Brainstormed: Low quality how? Like, the bakers put sawdust put in bread to save flour low quality? Our teeth are worn down by forty years old because we live in a desert and the sand gets into our food no matter what we do and grinds our molars to nubs? We only get the worst cuts of meat because it’s all we can afford or the best stuff has to be sacrificed or tithed? Salt is expensive because we don’t live near the sea or any salt deposits so trading for it is pricey? There’s been plenty of cheats, circumstances, and shortcuts throughout history that may decrease what we would call the quality of food, and all of those examples really did happen.

Your idea of quality may be a hoity-toity five star restaurant, or an enormous home-cooked fresh meal, or the tastiest dish with all the seasonings on it. Instead of describing the food as low quality, think about what your people would consider high quality. What do they love? What flavors are common, and what’s rarer and therefore richer? How available is plant-based food, meaning are there herbs and fruit trees in everyone’s garden or is agriculture and import the only way of obtaining them? How available is animal-based food, meaning do these people live as herdsfolk and eat a whole sheep every week including the organs or do fishing boats bring in dozens of kinds of seafood or is the entire population practically vegetarian until traders arrive with preserved meats?

Think about where your people are situated geographically to figure out the resources available to them, and their neighboring countries for trade. Also think about how developed your people are. This website is a timeline of food throughout history, and may help you pin down some barebones basics.

Tex: Both Feral and Brainstormed offer excellent advice, and I’ll be reiterating most of that in my own opinion.

Cooking techniques are cumulative skills that reflect a culture’s technological progression. We started with a plain old fire, so cooking food with that meant techniques like spitroasting - with the invention of pottery, we could put things in containers over, on, and even under said fire, which would bring us “new” techniques like broiling, boiling (comestibles in a liquid), roasting, sautéing, searing, and blanching (comestibles scalded in boiling water and then removed into an ice/cold water bath).

These cumulative skills are also exponential, in that most of these adapted techniques can be combined with other skills. Take, for example, a stew. The base ingredients - meats, vegetables, grains - can be cooked with direct heat (e.g. grilling over a fire), then added to a cooking container (e.g. pots of different compositions) with a fat (e.g. oil, butter) to further cook the ingredients until it’s a desired texture (e.g. “spoon tender”).

This would be a “complete” meal by itself, of course - but it’s a cook’s decision to continue on to a stew because… well, because they think it tastes good, and there could be social/cultural reasons to continue expending effort into their food. Adding a liquid - it could be water/milk, but also a composite liquid (more cooking!) such as a broth - and simmering (low indirect heat over an extended period of time) would turn this dish into a stew.

Stews (and soups, the less dense predecessor) are popular in a great deal of cultures for a variety of reasons. For one, it’s relatively easy to make - Medieval European pottage could be tended over a fire throughout the day, portions taken and the dish stretched with minimal fuss. For two, such dishes are filling, with minimal concentration on the type or number of ingredients - the basic recipe is usually water + grain(s) + vegetable(s), and can be dressed up with whatever extra ingredients are on hand. Vegetables are resource-cheap foods, as they can be grown in family/shared gardens, and grains provide the lion’s share of carbohydrates (glucose, necessary for cell function; see: cellular respiration) as well as other things like protein and fats that vegetables are usually unable to provide in significant quantities.

Soup is, in itself, preceded by gruel. Originally, soup was nothing more than something to dip your bread (or other grain-based, dry food) into, and expanded into more than just a glorified sauce. Gruels are liquid + grain, and even simpler than soups or stews. They’re very easy to make, and often invented when a culture experiences their transition to a sedentary society (marked by the shift from hunting/gathering to agriculture). Breads of some sort usually accompany this because someone will figure out indirect heating (our first baking!).

Bread-beers (Ancient History), as a side note, frequently accompany breads and gruels in terms of cooking technique epochs. The Ancient Egyptians had one, Eastern Europe another (Kvass). This is a cousin, sort of, to gruels and breads in terms of technique, and utilizes the introduction of fermentation (another skill! Possibly discovered by accident via “oh this spoiled food didn’t kill me, neat”) from ingredients such as yeast. Alcohol that doesn’t start from a solid base such as bread is the refined version of this technique.

So far, everything I’ve mentioned is made from staple foods. It is the application of technique that creates such a wide variety. There is some degree of social hierarchy when it comes to what techniques are picked by a cook, if only because some of the more refined (a term I use as a concentration of technique, not an indication of quality) ones are costly in terms of time and sometimes also available tools (e.g. it’s simpler to make a bread-beer than vodka, especially if you don’t have a distillation set-up).

Seasoning is… a thorny topic. Most ingredients that get called “seasoning” - especially in the modern, North American sense - are just plants used in lower ratios than others in a dish. Take basil, for example. When it’s used in low proportions, it’s a seasoning (e.g. tomato sauce with basil). When used in high proportions, it’s an ingredient (e.g. pesto).

Now, there’s significant overlap in which plants are called “seasonings” and which are called “herbs”. This would be because plants designated as herbs are frequently prized in cookery as adding aromatic or savoury elements to a dish - too much can be overpowering (e.g. rosemary in small amounts can be delicious, but in large amounts can be too bitter to enjoy), so they’re often relegated as a component towards flavour profiles. Their physical quantity available to a culture does not necessarily designate “high” or “low” quality, merely the ratio that is culturally-accepted in recipes. (E.g. Italy uses basil in many dishes, but does that make either the dishes or the basil low quality? No.)

Herbs, as another side note, are frequently also used in medicine - hence herbal medicine. The medicinal plants wiki is less biased than the herbal medicine one, and offers some greater anthropological context.

Quality in terms of food is… usually more the ratio of preferred to not preferred qualities. In meat, this would mean things like fat, tendons, and gristle. Food, or rather ingredient, quality is a benchmark of how much time needs to be invested in preparing a dish. It takes significantly less time to cook bread when the grains are already hulled (and oftentimes polished), than if you had to go out to the field and do it yourself. Higher quality = higher convenience.

(Despite what Apicius might claim, spoiled food is not actually edible, and is different than purposefully fermented or cultured foods.)

Higher-quality ingredients means time saved, and that time could be allocated toward more complex cooking techniques. This isn’t always true in practice, since something like a cut of meat is better for one type of dish as opposed to another for practicality’s sake (i.e. if you’ve trimmed your meat so much it’s cubed, you’re not going to get a steak out of it). There’s some debate as to the idea of ingredient quantity vs technique complexity, where touted “high quality” foods (e.g. Sachertorte) use few ingredients, and “low quality” foods have many ingredients - usually seasonings, to mask the subpar flavour of something like a cut of meat.

Like Feral said, sauces are a great carrier for flavour, as well as helping to stretch the usable lifespan of an ingredient. A cut of meat ordinarily good for a steak that’s close to expiration might not be a good steak, but it could make for a decent stew or sausage, both of which could have sauces added to them to increase the complexity of the flavour profile. The food timeline which Brainstormed mentioned also has a timeline on sauces, which I think might interest you.

You mention “all the imported food is for the rich”, and I’m curious about that. Feral gave the example of the British upper-class restricting usage of some spices to the wealthier - and thus upper - classes of their society; is that what you’re referencing? What spices are you using as a base for your world, can they be domesticated? (For that matter, do greenhouses and the accompanying opportunistic entrepreneurs also exist? Or just a general opportunistic individual.)

The economic context of spices can’t be readily dismissed - there’s a weighing of amount of resources against amount of diplomatic tensions, so even if there’s an abundant amount of a given product, the providing nation could well make a money-based rude gesture in the direction of their client and increase the prices to artificially restrict supply. (Take tea, for example. Many, many economic wars have been fought over that [Abstract].)

The fluctuations of class-availability can include a factor of a nation’s influence on the global stage, and they could demand a good at a lower price and in large enough quantities to satisfy - at least temporarily - multiple social classes. This often comes at the cost of quality (here, in terms of purity of ingredients) - you can see this with tea, black pepper, olive oil, and many other class-oriented comestible goods (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). I will stress that quality grades aren’t precisely the same for single-source foods and multi-source foods (e.g. sirloin steak vs curry powder), because a drop in single-source quality is more noticeable than multi-source quality due to fewer things to hide an ingredient’s quality behind.

Foods can still be heavily seasoned on both ends of the class spectrum, but there would be differences in local vs foreign (domesticated vs imported), and whether it’s a specialty dish (e.g. foods made for holidays, see: stollen) because infrequently-made dishes on a cultural basis are more likely to have fewer differences in ingredient quality and technique complexity.

There are also some dishes that have artificial class restrictions, because the upper classes have a habit of refusing to eat dishes from the lower classes as a means of social division. This is especially apparent in something like bread (1, 2), but fluctuations of technique complexity and ingredient quality availability can mean that the classifications of bread types can shift (1).

Further Reading

(PDF) Evolution – Culinary Culture – Cooking Technology by Thomas A. Vilgis

History of Cooking by All That Cooking

Feral (again): Modern History has a four part series on food in Medieval England broken down by social class with commentary on how it compares to food today, which may elucidate some of what we’ve been talking about in regards to the culturally variable meaning of “quality” in food.

#pylons #food #Anonymous

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justforsmiles · 6 years ago

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Asian American representation

Months ago when I was impatiently awaiting the release of the movie Crazy Rich Asians, I did not expect for the movie to affect me this much.

When I finally watched Crazy Rich Asians and the Netflix film To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, I knew that both films have done just that.

Crazy Rich Asians is a romantic comedy-drama that tells the story of Rachel, an NYU professor who accompanies her boyfriend to his best friend’s wedding in Singapore and learns that he’s the son of the richest family on the island and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is a teen romantic comedy that follows Lara Jean, a teen romantic who writes secret love letters to boys when she wants to get over them who then discovers her private letters have been mailed to their recipients.

Crazy Rich Asians is the first movie from a major Hollywood studio to feature a predominately Asian cast since The Joy Luck Club (1993). That’s 25 years ago. To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before features a Vietnamese-American as the lead.

If this is not a big deal, I don’t know what is.

I am a first-generation Asian American. I was born in Manhattan, New York, raised in Brooklyn for eight years, and currently reside in Queens, New York. My parents are both United States citizens who immigrated from Hong Kong and Wenzhou, China.Growing up, I never went through the challenges that my parents faced when immigrating a foreign country–assimilating into the culture, and tackling language barriers and cultural differences. My sister and I both were born into a life that my parents had to learn from scratch. My parents faced a lot of struggles and made a lot of sacrifices to enable my sister and me to have what we have today. What I did not realize was that I’d face many of my own internal identity battles when it came to how others viewed me and more importantly, how I viewed myself.

Back in middle school, high school, and college, the question “Where are you from?” was quite popular. When I reply that I was born here, in the U.S., you already know what is coming- I get a response of “No, where are your parents from?” or “No, where are you really from?” That’s when I finally understood that I wasn’t American like everyone else, I was Asian-American.

As a kid, I never thought I was seen as different. I didn’t feel alienated because I was Chinese-American. I never felt not white. However, preconceived notions continue to be made solely based on race. Even though I was born in the U.S., went to school here, work here, will others ever accept and understand that I am American? Will Asian Americans be viewed as anything but foreigners?

Despite the 150-plus-year history of Asians in the United States, when Asian Americans are included in U.S. history, we’re often presented as a model minority and are lumped together as a hardworking, passive, and successful minority. I was and am often viewed as too American to be Chinese and too Chinese to be American. This is how it feels like to be a first-generation American and an Asian-American. It’s the feeling of being able to be on both sides, feeling included, but simultaneously feeling not included.

I’m tired of having to bear derogatory, racist, and stereotypical comments just because I’m Asian. I’m tired of others associating everything I do with the fact that I’m Asian. Asians are NOT all the same. If someone is Asian, don’t automatically assume they are Chinese. I’m not a doctor or a lawyer. I’m a fantastic driver, thank you very much (and even if I’m a bad driver, it’s not because I’m Asian. It’s because I’m a bad driver). Don’t call me or my food exotic. I’m a human being just like everyone else. I am me and just want to be me for me–I’m not my ethnicity, race, or skin color.

As a child, I didn’t get to see myself in TV shows, movies, or stories. There wasn’t anyone like me on the screens. With the release of Crazy Rich Asians and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, we saw two protagonists that happen to be Asian American.This shouldn’t be a big deal like this in 2018, but it is. Female protagonists of color are still rare in Hollywood.

In April 2016, I tweeted “America is still deciding what to think and do with Asians beyond offering comic relief in stereotypical roles” when Scarlett Johansson was casted as Major Motoko Kusanagi in the film adaptation of the Ghost in the Shell manga. The excuse is that there aren’t big enough Asian/Asian-American names to choose from. Well, without a conscientious effort, how will anyone ever break through and become familiar enough with the audiences to allow producers to confidently cast them to be a lead in a film?

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is a film adaptation of Jenny Han’s book. Jenny Han turned down many film offers because some studios wanted the female protagonist to be played by a white actress. It’s important that Crazy Rich Asians and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before do well because we need to show Hollywood that movies with Asian leads are an option, too. We want this to start a domino effect whereby more diverse stories can and will be told.

In no way are these two films made to represent ALL Asians and all experiences, but it’s a beginning that will hopefully shift Hollywood executives’ thinking and affect their behaviors of funding more works from diverse voices.

Crazy Rich Asians had many moments that spoke directly to me. Not only that but Crazy Rich Asians proves Asian American representation can be successful too. The film opened on Wednesday, August 15th. The film made $35.3 million from Wednesday to Sunday and another $26.5 million for the second weekend (this weekend)–a current grand total of $76.8 million!

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is a teen rom-com I wish I had when I was in high school. In an opinion editorial, Jenny Han writes “What would it have meant for me back then to see a girl who looked like me star in a movie? Not as the sidekick or romantic interest, but as the lead? Not just once, but again and again? Everything. There is power in seeing a face that looks like yours do something, be someone. There is power in moving from the sidelines to the center…Because when you see someone who looks like you, it reveals what is possible. It’s not just maybe I could be an actress. It’s maybe I could be an astronaut, a fighter, a president. A writer. This is why it matters who is visible. It matters a lot. And for the girls of 2018, I want more. I want the whole world.” Read Jenny’s piece here.

Watch these two films. Show up. Be curious for people different than you…that’s when inclusion begins.

Be an ally. Recognize your privilege (you can be privileged without feeling privileged), own your experiences, listen more, have uncomfortable conversations, help yourself understand, consistently learn and unlearn, and be proactive in taking responsibility for changing these patterns.

We still have a long way to go but seeing the films Crazy Rich Asians and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before doing well is a step in the right direction.

Source: http://justviasyl.me/2018/08/28/asian-american-representation/

#blog post #on the blog #personal entries #thoughts #nyc blogger #blogger #justviasyl #asian american #crazy rich asians #to all the boys i've loved before #netflix #movies

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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years ago

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Immigrant-Led Food Startups Face an Uphill Battle in the Pandemic

Anu Bhalla demos Meal Mantra at a Rhode Island grocery store | Meal Mantra/Facebook

New business are most vulnerable to disruptions caused by COVID-19

This story was originally published on Civil Eats.

This spring, as Tarun Bhalla was testing out eight-ounce curry packets for a new line of meal kits, he found that they had a tendency to burst open in a shipping test. He’s been looking for a company that can manufacture stronger packets ever since, but he still hasn’t found one. And meetings are hard to arrange during a global pandemic.

Bhalla and his wife Anu launched Meal Mantra brand curries in 2016, and they had just begun ramping up production when the coronavirus hit. They turned to the idea of selling meal kits after their biggest client closed, grant applications were denied, federal aid was out of reach, and bank loans were looking impossible. Bhalla has no backup plan and no clear path forward.

“That’s all we think about,” says Bhalla. “We have to see this year out. It’s survival, that’s it.”

The Bhallas and countless food entrepreneurs like them are essential contributors to a diverse economic landscape. They enrich cultural exchange through culinary diplomacy. They’re immigrants, they’re working parents, and they’re lifting themselves out of poorly paid wage work. And yet when it comes to staying in business during the pandemic, many have been left to their own devices.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Meal Mantra (@mantrameal) on Jan 25, 2019 at 4:47pm PST

Earlier this year, the Bhallas struck a deal to sell their pre-made curries to Boston College, which wanted to add them to five cafeteria menus after a successful pilot. But when the campus closed down in the second week of March, Meal Mantra lost 20 percent of its revenue overnight, and left the Bhallas with a glut of product.

The future of the company was suddenly in jeopardy. Self-professed marathon-running health nuts, the Bhallas had long been disappointed with the highly processed curries cluttering supermarket shelves. Anu, granddaughter of tandoori innovator Kundan Lal Gujral, adapted her recipes to incorporate fresh, New England-grown ingredients, and their lemongrass and galangal-infused Goan Curry won a Sofi Award in 2019, the same year their revenues hit $60,000.

Meal Mantra was founded with money from a pharmaceutical business the Bhallas sold before immigrating from Delhi four years ago. Their daughter is heading to dental school and their son is a college sophomore. Tarun just turned 50 and the company was supposed to see him through to retirement.

“We were just plowing that money back into our business hoping this would grow,” he says. “And it was growing.”

In India, Tarun could pick up the phone and connect directly with buyers at colleges, grocery chains, and banquet halls. In America, finding new clients meant trade shows.

“Food shows are the only way we can really get our product in front of our customers and get new accounts,” he says. “We signed up for six shows this year, but sadly none of them are taking place.”

Retail hadn’t been a focus, but Meal Mantra curries had been available in a few local grocery stores. After the pandemic began, they shifted production from gallon bags to jars, and set their website up for online sales. Familiar customers placed orders, but it wasn’t nearly enough to make up for losing Boston College.

Adapting to a new reality

Companies like Meal Mantra are among the most vulnerable to disruptions caused by the coronavirus, according to Leticia Landa, deputy director of the food incubator La Cocina in San Francisco.

“Anybody who doesn’t have a lot of savings isn’t going to be able to invest in the business in the way that it’s going to need to [adapt],” she says. “Businesses that are just getting started, or families that are in business together and there’s not any outside source of financial stability, that’s also challenging.”

For the past 15 years, La Cocina has helped low-income women and immigrants create financially sustainable culinary food businesses. Today, they’re just helping their members survive. A standard incubator cohort is 34 businesses, but that number has almost doubled since a number of recent graduates are still working with the organization.

Many of their restaurants and caterers have closed temporarily, but packaged food producers are struggling as well. People are cooking at home more than ever, but getting packaged products onto grocery store shelves is expensive and the margins are thin.

“There’s very few small regional, local food producers making packaged foods who rely entirely on grocery [sales],” says Landa. “That’s one of the things they’re doing, and then they’re also selling at farmers’ markets or doing catering.”

Supermarket shelves may be expensive and competitive real estate, but Lilian Ryland aimed to make in-store retail her coronavirus salvation.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Chef Lilian (@naijabukaseattle) on Apr 19, 2019 at 11:04am PDT

The year had started off great for Ryland, the sole proprietor of Kent, Washington-based Naija Buka, which is named for the tiny pop-up roadside restaurants in her home country. “In Nigeria the best meals you’ll ever eat are from bukas,” says Ryland.

Reliable weekly catering gigs brought in good money without too much stress (she refuses to work weddings), and without too much time away from her children. But when Seattle’s office buildings closed down, there were no corporate workshops or off-site meetings to cater.

Office closures also cut into Ryland’s other main gig — preparing freezer-ready meals for busy professionals in her Nigerian expat community. Sales of those meals dropped 68 percent by April.

“There was so much uncertainty; a lot of people didn’t want to spend that money to buy food,” Ryland says. “And they were at home, so they could cook.”

Fortunately, Ryland had also begun producing shelf-stable sauces — first jollof, and then Everything Sauce — through Seattle’s Food Innovation Network and started pushing them alongside meal kits through social media and her website. But she knew she needed more outlets.

In December, Ryland had pitched Naija Buka to PCC Community Markets, a Seattle-based co-op. They agreed to carry a couple sauces on condition that she eliminate vegetable oil and cornstarch. Ryland reworked the recipes, but finding a distributor wasn’t easy.

“In Nigeria you can just jump out of your house, sell food, and people just come and buy it,” she says.

Seven years ago, before joining her then-fiancé in America, Ryland was a journalist and digital editor in Abuja. She worked at Nordstrom after immigrating until she was eight months pregnant with her first child. She impressed other expats with her Afang soup and jollof, built a reputation at farmers’ markets, then switched to catering corporate events after having her second child.

So it was frustrating when her applications and emails to regional food distributors were ignored, and infuriating when she did hear back.

“They said, ‘We’re not sure, it’s not something that’s familiar to us’,” she says. “Which is offensive to me. They have a wall full of pasta sauces and here I am with the first ever authentic Nigerian jollof sauce — and you have a huge African community here.”

It took five months before the Puget Sound Food Hub, a member-owned cooperative, agreed to distribute her sauces in May. Then, in mid-June, PCC started selling them at their newest location.

It was exciting, and a big financial relief. Then, less than a month later, Naija Buka was available at all 14 PCC locations after loyal customers waged an informal campaign demanding greater availability. But not all Rylan’s peers have been so lucky.

Fresh food vendors face another set of challenges

Shelf-stable products like Meal Mantra curries and Naija Buka sauces can outlast temporary fluctuations in demand. They can be centrally produced and distributed easily. But fresh food vendors also have to be immediately responsive to market changes or their inventory spoils.

“For food producers who are used to selling through farmers’ markets, catering, or doing groceries for the grab-and-go section, it’s pretty cost-prohibitive to ship cold unless people are buying a big quantity,” says Landa.

Take Oyna Natural Foods. The three-year-old company makes kuku sabzi and other Persian frittatas, and it had just expanded its retail footprint from six to 20 stores early this year. Then, the company’s owners pulled out of the new locations when coronavirus restrictions brought in-store demonstrations to an end.

“Education is definitely a huge part of our business,” says Oyna co-founder Mehdi Parnia.

Parnia and his wife, Aisan Hoss, built up their culinary reputation face-to-face at farmers’ markets, where they could offer samples, introduce themselves and a little bit of their culture to connect with potential customers. But when it’s sitting alone on a grocery shelf, Parnia found that it is harder to introduce kuku to new markets.

Oyna Natural Foods was expected to triple its business this year, according to Parnia. The one-time construction engineer took up food entrepreneurship after immigrating from Tehran to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2013 so Hoss could pursue a career as a choreographer. The couple started 2020 off focused on expansion, attending specialty foods trade shows, meeting store buyers, and finalizing new branding.

Instead, when cities shut down, business contracted sharply. Sales at the six stores where Oyna Natural Foods was already established became inconsistent. One week, Parnia would restock his entire inventory, the next week nothing sold. Other small vendors disappeared from the shelves entirely.

“The grab-and-go, ready-to-eat meals section has been significantly hit,” says Parnia. “Most of the shoppers were workers wanting to get lunch.”

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A post shared by OynaNaturalfoods (@oynanaturalfoods) on Jun 3, 2019 at 10:19pm PDT

Parnia and Hoss rushed to create a web store, photographing kuku and assorted sauces themselves. They now make deliveries once a week throughout the Bay Area. Still, they’re selling about 400 a week as opposed to an average of 2,000 a week last year.

They’ve experimented with shipping discounts and deals, and they’re courting new customers through social media, but Parnia finds that his inability to grasp the nuances of American pop-culture render Instagram a foreign language. Social media is “worse than going through the immigration process itself,” he adds.

Money is tight. Parnia admits that if La Cocina hadn’t suspended rent they would have stopped production entirely, and even without that overhead the business is in survival mode. But the pressure to keep going is more than financial.

“This is like a baby,” says Parnia. “We have been putting a lot of sweat and tears to make this business what it is today. If this goes away, it’s going to be a really, really painful and hard situation for me to figure out what to do.”

Get to where the sales are

Landa’s pandemic advice to La Cocina members is: “Cut your expenses as much as humanly possible; try to figure out where the sales are.”

One such member, Hayward, California-based Alicia’s Tamales Los Mayas, is selling tamales to Bay Area school districts for their lunch programs as an option to be eaten at home during the pandemic. Meal Mantra was able to sell some leftover curry from their Boston College production at cost to a food relief program run by the city of Boston.

La Cocina has been reaching out to food critics for reviews, and to national retailers like Williams + Sonoma, which carry assortments of specialty foods and packaged meals. They also sell La Cocina Food Boxes packed with nine items from a rotating cast of members. Oyna Natural Foods has been featured.

So has Teranga, the baobab-based juice and energy-bar company from Nafy Flatley. In early 2020, Flatley had her products in almost 40 Bay Area retailers and did frequent in-store demonstrations.

Flatley also catered events and she saw the crisis impact her business early on. By late March, roughly half of the stores and cafes selling Teranga products closed or started buying less.

“It’s been very hard to see those stores close and [know they] might never come back again,” she says.

Farmers’ markets became a stressful and profitless endeavor. Flatley directed customers to her online store and closed her four stands. By mid-March, she was stuck at home with three kids who no longer had schools to go to, trying to devise ways to salvage her business. By the end of the month, she was selling ready-to-heat meals through her website: Maafè one week, Nambè another, Yassa for Independence Day week.

“It’s not making up for what we were making before, but at least it’s keeping us on the market,” she says. “It’s keeping us producing. It’s keeping in people’s minds that we’re not closed.”

The private meals are more work. It takes longer to package individual portions than to prepare catering trays, and only four businesses at a time are allowed in the La Cocina kitchen, which is half the businesses typically allowed to operate there at a time. There are additional costs as well. Flatley pays extra for eco-friendly containers. She has a reserve of imported baobab and hibiscus, but ginger has doubled in price.

“It’s very difficult for me to increase my prices because I don’t believe in selling expensive food,” she says. “Everybody should have good, healthy food and it shouldn’t cost an arm and a leg.”

The extra labor is offset by Flatley’s husband, who delivers meals, restocks store shelves, and buys supplies. But he can only help because he is no longer working. The family depends on Teranga now as its sole source of income.

“I would like to move forward with all of the goals and plans and ambitions I’ve had since the beginning,” says Flatley. “That’s one of the reasons I immigrated to the United States. I think the American dream is still possible for me and my family.”

Flatley, who is from Senegal, worked in marketing before leaving to care for her firstborn son, born premature, and her mother, who was diagnosed with dementia around the same time. Selling the juices and energy bars her family made and sold back home when she was a child through word of mouth led to a new career path that she could balance with family.

But, as of early July, she says, revenue had been slashed in half. And while Teranga isn’t operating at a loss, it can’t provide a cushion for emergencies or next steps either.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Teranga (@terangalife) on Nov 2, 2019 at 1:15pm PDT

Federal bailout fails small businesses

All the entrepreneurs who spoke with Civil Eats for this article are wary of taking on debt, and some distrust banks outright.

“I’ve been denied loans because of who I am and what I look like,” says Flatley. “I have good credit. I can show them proof of how the business is sustainable and is growing every year, but they don’t care about that.”

However, given the dire circumstances, even wary business owners have looked into federal relief programs this spring. PPP loans were met with widespread confusion over who qualified and how to apply. When eligibility opened to owners, gig workers, and the self-employed, the confusion worsened. Banks were inundated with applications, and those without an existing business relationship with the bank were all but guaranteed to be lost in the chaos.

“It’s the big players that have relationships with their banks,” says Meal Mantra’s Bhalla, who doesn’t even have a U.S. credit score.

La Cocina was able to secure a PPP loan and keep its full staff, who researched relief programs across the governmental strata. The organization partnered with other San Francisco community agencies, and tried to find the best options for each of their members. Not everyone qualified for assistance, but Landa says that everyone who did apply got it. La Cocina also successfully raised over $500,000 to create an in-house emergency relief fund.

But most small food producers don’t have La Cocina in their corner.

“It was super confusing the whole time. And they kept changing the rules,” says Landa, noting that she’s a native English speaker born and raised in the U.S., college educated, and familiar with institutions. Anyone newly immigrated, speaking in their second language, or unaccustomed to traditional banking institutions would have found the PPP process impenetrable, she said.

None of the entrepreneurs we spoke to received first-round federal relief. Several applied for grants, and some received them. Since she spoke with Civil Eats, Flatley applied for a loan through the Small Business Administration. “I was granted a loan, which is far from enough but I will use that for now until other opportunities come up,” she says.

Seeking a path forward

As the pandemic rages on, there’s no clear future for most of these small food businesses.

In Portland, Oregon, Wambui Machua opened Spice of Africa in mid-February with the intention of serving lamb burgers, curries, and Kenyan tacos in a new food hall — but when that closed down in the spring, she had to sit tight until customers returned in mid-June. But sitting tight didn’t come easy to an ambitious entrepreneur who has been building her business for over a decade, including catering, farmers’ market sales, and classes.

After graduating with a degree in business management, she pitched a cooking class to Portland Community College with a home-made brochure. “I started my business to share and educate people about my culture,” says Machua, who hails from the Kikuyu tribe in Central Kenya.

Last year, Spice of Africa brought in approximately $100,000, its most successful year. Machua would book three, four, sometimes more gigs in a day, delegating tasks to eight or 10 contract workers as needed. After the coronavirus hit, she worked alone staffing one farmers’ market stall on weekends.

There was never any question of shutting down and finding work elsewhere. “My mother says that I’m not employable, because I have been my own person for way too long,” she says.

Things could have been worse. Even with a teenage daughter, Machua has low expenses and a stable home. The landlord of her restaurant suspended rent, and the angel investor who backed the kitchen build-out did the same. Regular customers called in bulk orders of samosas to pick up at the farmers’ market. Then, in late June, she accepted an offer to teach an online cooking class. Going virtual would be an adjustment—there would be less dancing, no ability to sample other people’s dishes. But the first virtual class went so well Machua began setting up her own.

After three months, restrictions on indoor dining were relaxed in Portland, but Machua wasn’t sure whether customers would feel safe enough to return. She hoped so — she would have to start paying rent again — and had been passing out discount cards at the farmers’ market. But with coronavirus infections climbing, she also didn’t want a crush of customers at the counter. It was time to look into delivery apps and hire a business manager.

Everyone Civil Eats spoke to is slowly plotting a path forward. Nafy Flatley worries about the increase of infections in California but remains optimistic about opening a bricks-and-mortar location for Teranga at the Municipal Marketplace, a public-private venture in San Francisco that will offer kitchen and retail space to several La Cocina incubator graduates. Construction has been delayed, but she still holds out hope that it will open.

“I have a deep belief that we’ll recover and bounce back and life will be normal again,” Flatley says. “We don’t know when that’s going to be but slowly, step-by-step, we have to walk towards our goals.”

Mehdi Parnia wants to make kuku sabzi a regional sensation, then expand the brand nationally. Positive feedback from trade shows, and the interest from retail outlets, gives him reason to believe such growth is possible. For now, Parnia has been in talks with Tastermonial, an online market and food box company catering to people with specific dietary needs.

Although Lilian Ryland is doubtful her catering business will rebound, she’s still invested in the Seattle-area food scene. She wants to see local farmers grow crops that African chefs can use instead of dried imports. One earlier attempt at cultivating the scotch bonnet peppers that give her sauces a kick failed, but she believes the Nigerian community alone could drive market demand.

Tarun and Anu Bhalla are taking the longview, as they work to find stronger sauce packets for Meal Mantra. As worried as Tarun admits to being, he also believes they have a proven product that will become more popular over time. In the meanwhile, they’ve introduced a few chutneys that they’ve been selling online and at the farmers’ market.

As La Cocina’s Landa sees it, the greater community shares some responsibility in supporting small business owners who add diversity to the culinary marketplace, and — through their sauces, dishes, and immersive cooking classes — to the variety and complexity at the heart of American culture.

“I’m hoping that there’ll be continued interest in supporting these businesses,” she says. “Pay attention to focusing on smaller, local brands when you do your grocery shopping.”

• Immigrant-Led Food Startups Face an Uphill Battle During a Pandemic [Civil Eats]

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/3bMdmu5 https://ift.tt/2GOBill

Anu Bhalla demos Meal Mantra at a Rhode Island grocery store | Meal Mantra/Facebook

New business are most vulnerable to disruptions caused by COVID-19

This story was originally published on Civil Eats.

“That’s all we think about,” says Bhalla. “We have to see this year out. It’s survival, that’s it.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Meal Mantra (@mantrameal) on Jan 25, 2019 at 4:47pm PST

“We were just plowing that money back into our business hoping this would grow,” he says. “And it was growing.”

In India, Tarun could pick up the phone and connect directly with buyers at colleges, grocery chains, and banquet halls. In America, finding new clients meant trade shows.

Adapting to a new reality

Companies like Meal Mantra are among the most vulnerable to disruptions caused by the coronavirus, according to Leticia Landa, deputy director of the food incubator La Cocina in San Francisco.

Supermarket shelves may be expensive and competitive real estate, but Lilian Ryland aimed to make in-store retail her coronavirus salvation.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Chef Lilian (@naijabukaseattle) on Apr 19, 2019 at 11:04am PDT

Office closures also cut into Ryland’s other main gig — preparing freezer-ready meals for busy professionals in her Nigerian expat community. Sales of those meals dropped 68 percent by April.

“There was so much uncertainty; a lot of people didn’t want to spend that money to buy food,” Ryland says. “And they were at home, so they could cook.”

“In Nigeria you can just jump out of your house, sell food, and people just come and buy it,” she says.

So it was frustrating when her applications and emails to regional food distributors were ignored, and infuriating when she did hear back.

It took five months before the Puget Sound Food Hub, a member-owned cooperative, agreed to distribute her sauces in May. Then, in mid-June, PCC started selling them at their newest location.

Fresh food vendors face another set of challenges

“Education is definitely a huge part of our business,” says Oyna co-founder Mehdi Parnia.

“The grab-and-go, ready-to-eat meals section has been significantly hit,” says Parnia. “Most of the shoppers were workers wanting to get lunch.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by OynaNaturalfoods (@oynanaturalfoods) on Jun 3, 2019 at 10:19pm PDT

Get to where the sales are

Landa’s pandemic advice to La Cocina members is: “Cut your expenses as much as humanly possible; try to figure out where the sales are.”

So has Teranga, the baobab-based juice and energy-bar company from Nafy Flatley. In early 2020, Flatley had her products in almost 40 Bay Area retailers and did frequent in-store demonstrations.

Flatley also catered events and she saw the crisis impact her business early on. By late March, roughly half of the stores and cafes selling Teranga products closed or started buying less.

“It’s been very hard to see those stores close and [know they] might never come back again,” she says.

But, as of early July, she says, revenue had been slashed in half. And while Teranga isn’t operating at a loss, it can’t provide a cushion for emergencies or next steps either.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Teranga (@terangalife) on Nov 2, 2019 at 1:15pm PDT

Federal bailout fails small businesses

All the entrepreneurs who spoke with Civil Eats for this article are wary of taking on debt, and some distrust banks outright.

“It’s the big players that have relationships with their banks,” says Meal Mantra’s Bhalla, who doesn’t even have a U.S. credit score.

But most small food producers don’t have La Cocina in their corner.

Seeking a path forward

As the pandemic rages on, there’s no clear future for most of these small food businesses.

There was never any question of shutting down and finding work elsewhere. “My mother says that I’m not employable, because I have been my own person for way too long,” she says.

“I’m hoping that there’ll be continued interest in supporting these businesses,” she says. “Pay attention to focusing on smaller, local brands when you do your grocery shopping.”

• Immigrant-Led Food Startups Face an Uphill Battle During a Pandemic [Civil Eats]

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/3bMdmu5 via Blogger https://ift.tt/3ihQFAt

#Blogger #cooking #Eater #food #recipes

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theletterformallyknownasq · 5 years ago

Text

Kaja - August 22nd, 2018

Me: All right. Session 2. I'm here with Kaja Vang. Thank you for allowing me to interview you and hear your stories and your experiences of being Queer and immigrant while living and working and making home in Minnesota. Can you tell me how you received your name? Kaja: My mom said that my grandma had a dream and it was filled with a lot of fireflies. She just woke up and told my mom 'you're gonna name your kid Kab Ntsha.' That's how you pronounce it in Hmong. Kab meaning Bug, Ntsha meaning Light. And my mom was like 'OK cool.' And then she gave me my middle name which is Mindie. But my grandma basically named me.

Me: Have you ever revisited that story with your family to confirm that? Kaja: When I was a teenager, yeah. So my grandma passed this past winter, so I wish I took the time to actually talk to my grandma and figure out how did she specifically came up with my name. Because memories and words aren't always 100% what my people say. My mom is super dramatic sometimes. So when I was little when I first entered the academic world, my teacher couldn't pronounce my name, so they came up with Kaja, I just went with it. Then I was like, 'is that how I pronounce my name?' It sounded way easier. So I'm like 'OK cool whatever.' And then when I was transitioning into my freshman year in college, I was like 'oh I really want to reclaim my name and make sure people say it right.' And then I was talking to this white boy. He's like, "What's your name?" I'm like 'It's Kab Ntsha.' He's like 'Oh, ganja like weed?' And from that point I'm like 'nope, zip, I'm going with Kaja, pronounce my name wrong. I don't give a shit.' I only correct you if I love you dearly and you're a part of my life and I want that to be a thing. But general strangers, the youth that I work with, they sometimes call me the wrong name that sounds similar to Kaja. And people always question 'Oh is that how you say your name in Hmong?' And I'm like, 'no but I'm not trying to teach you right now.' Me: How have people mispronounced your name? Kaja: They call me Kaia which is like some white European shit. It's K-A-I-A instead of the J. They call me Kesha. Me: No. Kaja: They call me Tasha. Me: Nahhhh. But The "T"?! Kaja: Right? But that's the general gist of what people call me. And I just don't want to correct them unless I really care about them. Me: How do you identify? Pronouns et al? Kaja: I identify as a nonbinary and Queer Hmong writer. I write a lot. I'm pretty gay. Me: You kind of already touched on this but where's your family from? Kaja: So they are technically from Laos. I don't know my dad's history, I mainly know my mom’s. She grew up in the refugee camps in Thailand. Thailand and Laos is where my family is from. Me: And what brought them to Minnesota? Kaja: Colonialism. White supremacy. The U.S.-Vietnam War. My mom was born in 1974, so she grew up in the middle to end-ish of the Vietnam War. My mom's the oldest in her family and she had I think two younger brothers at that time when my grandma decided to leave Laos to go to the refugee camps in Thailand. She left my mom and her younger sister behind. So my mom and her younger sister had to basically leave. Someone ended up taking them to a refugee camp somewhere. I'm not sure if it's in Laos or Thailand. My mom was like 5 or something. She found aunties at the refugee camps and every morning before the sun rose, she would exit the refugee camp and then knock on neighbors’ doors and beg for food and she would come home, come back to the refugee camp and feed her younger sister. All the aunties kept telling her that her mom didn't love her, that she abandoned her and her father left as well. My granddad left way before my grandmother left to go to another refugee camp. But eventually a couple of years later, my grandpa came back and realizes she's his daughter, tells her to leave with him. And the whole family got reunited in the United States again. Me: Wow. I’m holding that for you, that's really heavy and hard to recall. My family had a similar experience but we were never displaced from our homelands. Thank you for sharing that. And what has kept them and yourself here? Kaja: I think the hopes and dreams of living a better life. For my parents, this is what they've always thought the U.S. would be. A place you can make it on your own and have your own business and be wealthy in terms of what Hmong immigrants think is successful. In my eyes, they're super successful. They have always thrown themselves into new experiences. So I grew up in a grocery store that my mom and dad got handed down from shady ass uncles. My mom and dad just kind of winged everything and learned everything about business by themselves. And they've always pushed me to be super innovative, creative, and to make a lot of money. And for me the reason why I'm here is because I'm about community. I found people who love me for who I am, and really support me and my journey of finding and expressing my authentic self. And that's why I'm here. Me: Would you want to stay in Minnesota? Kaja: For the time being, yes. I’m pretty sure this is an excuse for myself, but my parents are transitioning from owning a grocery store and then having the state buy the land because they want to pave a highway through it and do this man-made sewage lake thing.

Kaja: So then my mom and dad then purchased another commercial building a few miles away from the original one and this was a transitioning time my mom got her hairstyling license. And we bought this commercial building with the money that the government gives and my mom opened up her own beauty salon. And so right now, business has been going down and instead of renting out the open spaces in the building, my dad decided to renovate the middle space and make it a grocery store again. And so right now I'm kind of stuck helping them. Feeling obligated to be here for them still. But I mean I would like to move elsewhere and experience what life could be or how community looks like outside of Minnesota. Me: Hmm. East Coast then, maybe? Kaja: I haven't been there as an adult. I've only been to New York when I was a teenager. Me: What do you do for a living? Kaja: I work at a homeless drop-in center for youth between 16 and 23. I'm basically a social worker that stays in one spot. I don't leave the building ever, so I just do a lot of case management stuff or I build relationships with youth and provide them basic needs. But outside of that stuff that I do for a living that I don't get paid for, I do a lot of community organizing but not in terms of what the white structure of what community organizing is. I write and hope that would be something I can get paid to do one day. But I'm still trying to figure that out. Me: Next question is what gives you joy? Kaja: Gives me joy? Off the top of my head, I think puppies and babies. That gives me joy as well as connecting and getting to know more Queer and Trans folks of color as well as seeing how my parents are slowly learning and shifting their verbiage of talking about Queer and Trans Hmong people. My mom and dad are always using the excuse that they're too old and can't learn anything new, relying heavily on their kids. Just seeing the initial moment where I told my mom that I'm Queer. She's been referring to my partner as my partner instead of my friend. Slow steps. And that's cool with me. And that brings me a lot of joy, intermingled with a lot of frustration and anger. Good food brings me joy. Eating with other people brings me joy. I hate eating by myself. Me: What does Queer mean to you? I'm going to ask you to elaborate on your definition. Kaja: Queer. It means freedom or space to invest in yourself where you're liberated from the constraints of who you should be. So before I came out or identified as being Queer, I wondered if I was bisexual, and then was like ‘nah, bisexual doesn't feel like me, doesn't feel good to me.’ And then I wondered if I’m pansexual? Am I just attracted to people's personalities? And I'm like ‘nah, that doesn't feel good to me.’ And coming across the word Queer and having a community to reclaim that word again felt right. And it didn't feel too constraining or too rigid, but rather I get to define what Queer means to me. And you might have a different definition and that's cool. I don't mind that. But to me, it just means I'm able to move freely in my journey of discovering all of my identities and how that affects me in the ways that I navigate life. Me: What do you like or don't like about the mainstream definition? Kaja: I don't like white Queers. They're terrible. I have a couple of co-workers who are white cis gay men who say stuff like, "Back in my day, the word Queer was horrible. I don't know why you young kids are using it now." And I'm like ‘ok, to each their own, whatever. Don't judge me. Don't judge anyone.’ And then to the younger Queers or Queers my age, the mainstream usage of it just seems too academic where you have to have the right definition of Queer. And there is no fucking right definition of Queer. And even if your definition doesn't match, you're shunned. Using the word Queer in the mainstream way just seems so full of privilege and whiteness and I don't like that.

Me: Amen. Affirming all of those things. How does your family's culture define Queer? Kaja: YIKES. Me: If they can? Kaja: It's like an intermix of adopting the english word 'gay' to describe all types of Queer relationships and Queerness. Using slang terms. I don't know how to say it correctly, but it's a word that people have adapted to describe Trans women in community. But that's a really negative context that they use it in. It's just also kind of not spoken about. We don't talk about it. We don't acknowledge it. We pretend that Queer and Trans Folk people have never existed before and people think you're just crazy and that you need to find yourself a good man or woman then you'll be OK. I can't describe it in words but rather like in feelings of what Queerness means to the Hmong Community. A lot of shame and guilt and a lot of gaslighting that happens. Like an out of body experience of where you're like ‘Oh am I really Queer?’ But we don't have a word for it. It's shameful. So they think I'm just crazy. So I should probably marry a man.

Me: Last question before we get kicked out of this booth! It's a lil long though. If you could address the most influential public figures and decision makers in the state right now, what would you say about improving the standard of living for someone like yourself in Minnesota? Kaja: Well I don't know the academic term, but the health care where they don't bill you separately and you never meet your deductions and so you have to pay out of pocket for your health care. Universal health care that's affordable. Affordable in terms of we're not sacrificing X Y and Z to pay off our health care bills. We need health care that is encompassing all identities and all genders and all needs so we don't always have to go to specialty doctors and having to pay more and take the chances to cover it out of pocket. Kaja: Housing. Having a more sustainable way of providing housing for folks. Because homelessness is a huge issue here and people always go 'well why don't they work? Then they can get a place. Why isn't there enough public housing?' But there is enough public housing. The thing is we don't provide support to make that housing sustainable for them and we're only worried about if they're going to make enough money on time to pay for rent. It's more than that. It also includes mental health that affects their stability in housing. It also affects what barriers do people have to go through, especially being Queer and Trans and folks of color, to get jobs that pay you well and pay you enough so that you're able to have sustainable housing and that you don't always have to move here and there. And at the end of your lease, if your rent has gone up, you don't always have to find a new place, you know? We're always being displaced. We're always being moved. We are constantly forced to choose. Choose to live in a communal space where we're sharing a house with people, like 6-8 people in one place. And it's not like I only want my own house or my own space, but instead I want that to be a choice rather than out of necessity. Where you have Queer and Trans folks of color having to pool money together, having to share the little resources that they have to be able to support one another. That shouldn't be a thing. It should feel like a choice. But we're doing it out of necessity and survival. Put more Queer and Trans people in higher positions instead of assessing their background in education and experience and them not being good enough for those positions. Or the worry or the threat that we pose as Queer and Trans folks of color when we're trying to get hired for a supervisor position. It's not a threat to you and your power for the company to hire more Queer and Trans folks of color in a higher position.

Me: Well it challenges a power structure, that's why they don't do it. Make us the public figures and decision makers? Kaja: Hell yeah. Especially if you're working with Black and Brown youth, don't you think that? Me: They would respond a little more if they recognized themselves in the people in positions of power?

Kaja: Yeah. Like, why would you hire a white person to fill a role who doesn't reflect the population you’re serving? Me: Or does it? Kaja: Oooooh. Me: On that note. I think that is really awesome. Thank you Kaja!

#interviews

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mitchellkuga · 10 years ago

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My Native Tongue

Published by Southwest The Magazine

I was raised on Hawaiian Pidgin English, a melting pot of a language that reflects the islands’ history, but it took me years to fully appreciate its importance, not just to local culture but my own identity.

I don’t know if there’s a sound that captures what it means to be from Hawaii quite like Hawaiian Pidgin English. Sure, there’s the voice of the beloved Israel Kamakawiwo‘ole, singing coolly over his ukulele about the white sandy beaches and the “colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky.” Or the rhythmic cadences of the ipu, a percussive gourd that soundtracked the hula lessons I attended at the local Y as a child. Or the soothing trance of waves tickling the shore of Ala Moana Beach Park at dusk while my siblings and I waited for Fourth of July fireworks. But nothing reflects Hawaii’s confluence of cultures, its medley of immigrants, quite like my father’s voice barking, “Eh! Das all hamajang!”

He was referring to my tile work, which, to be fair, was all hamajang: messed up, crooked, disorderly. What did he expect? I was a broke Syracuse University student, back home in Honolulu for the summer and working with my dad to fund an expensive semester abroad in London. I didn’t know how to tile a pool, a skill my father had perfected decades ago, during summers helping his own father run the family pool company. Down in the scorching pit of a concrete hole, I saw a different side of my father, whose mode of communicating tended to err on the side of silence. Here, leading a team of laborers from as far as Micronesia and as near as Waipahu, he gave directives, criticisms, and the occasional compliment in the staccato inflection of Hawaiian Pidgin.

“Cherry,” he’d drawl, the few times I managed to do something right. He’d stretch both ends of the word to sound closer to “chair-ray” and employ it when something looked impeccable. I’d savor that verbal pat on the back for hours. Other words were less descriptive. “Try pass the da kine,” he’d say, gesturing toward a pile of tools. Through the powers of clairvoyance—“da kine” is said to derive from “the kind,” a common Pidgin catchall for “whatchamacallit”—I mostly understood what he was asking for. When I returned with the wrong thing, he’d clarify, “No, the da kine da kine!”

Growing up in Honolulu, I didn’t learn Pidgin so much as absorb it; the language was as inherent to the texture of my upbringing as rubbah slippahs (flip-flops) and Spam. It originated on the sugarcane plantations that proliferated throughout Hawaii during the turn of the 20th century, leading to a burgeoning economy that brought immigrants from China, Japan, Portugal, Korea, and the Philippines despite less than ideal conditions. To communicate, plantation workers fused pieces of their native tongues with Hawaiian and English, creating a dialect to match an unprecedented convergence of cultures yearning to connect.

Though its origins are proudly blue collar, Pidgin in Hawaii is ubiquitous. Brash, sharp, and comically evocative, I heard it most frequently in the taunts hurled on my elementary schoolyard (“You so lolo,” meant someone was stupid), peppering the cadence of my aunty’s garage parties (“Brah, you stay all buss,” meant someone was drunk), and marinating the tongues at barbecues on the beach (“Ho! Get choke grindz” meant there was food, and lots of it). It’s the dialect favored by local comedians, who brandish its self-aware, anti-establishment humor as both identity and weapon: for locals only. It’s how we “talk story,” catching up over plate lunches in between the clinking of Heine-kens. It’s Standard American English dressed in an aloha shirt, trading its monocle for a pair of sunglasses. Construction workers, police officers, and bus drivers all speak it. So did my dentist. It’s not so much a reflection of local culture as the culture itself, as it is one of the fundamental things that makes Hawaii Hawaii.

To the foreign ear, it might sound like botched English, a gross simplification that ignores words like “are” and “is” (“You stay hungry?”), flips sentence structure on its head (“So cute da baby”), and employs colorful slang. “Broke da mouth,” for instance, is used when food is so “‘ono,” or delicious, that your mouth breaks, and “talk stink” means to engage in the odious art of bad-mouthing. But the Pidgin that locals speak today isn’t slang, broken English, or even technically Pidgin—defined by Merriam-Webster as “a simplified speech used for communication between people with different languages”—which might be the most Pidgin thing about Pidgin. Instead, generations of locals (some who speak exclusively in Pidgin) elevated what was once considered hamajang plantation talk into its very own form, replete with its own set of rules. Linguists define it as a creole, a separate language that was recognized as such by the Census Bureau in 2015.

Ididn’t grow up embracing Pidgin. After Pidgin-ing out on job sites, my father would code-switch back to “proper” English at home. Growing up, this fluidity felt central to the language, the almost subconscious ability to distinguish when it was appropriate to wield its power and when to stash it in your back pocket. Not understanding this difference had its consequences. My mother, who grew up on Kauai and moved to the “big city” of Honolulu to attend a private boarding school, recalls her high school history teacher ordering her to stand in a corner and stare at a wall. Her offense? Saying “da kine.”

This stigmatization traces back to those sugarcane plantations: Pidgin as broken English for the uneducated immigrant. The Hawaii State Board of Education has repeatedly attempted to ban Pidgin from the public school system, with former Gov. Ben Cayetano once declaring Pidgin “a tremendous handicap” for those “trying to get a job in the real world.” Growing up, I wore my Pidgin lightly, fearing that indulging in its subversion was a one-way ticket to nowhere, a way of limiting myself to the bottom of that concrete pit.

In the ’90s, a wave of writers and activists fought to combat this perception, sparking something of a Pidgin Renaissance. Through poetry, novels, and essays, writers like Lois-Ann Yamanaka, Lee Cataluna, and Darrell H.Y. Lum positioned the once dismissed dialect as literature. Emerging out of that shift stomped Pidgin theater, Pidgin dictionaries, and a Pidgin Bible, dubbed “Da Jesus Book.” “Talking li’ dat” (“like that”) even managed to penetrate the most resistant institution: academia. At Syracuse University, to my shock, I studied Yamanaka’s seminal novel Blu’s Hanging, which mines the Pidgin of its protagonist to spotlight the underbelly of working class Hawaii. In 2002, the University of Hawaii at Manoa established The Charlene Junko Sato Center for Pidgin, Creole, and Dialect Studies, dedicated to conducting research on “stigmatized dialects.”

A leading voice in the movement is Lee Tonouchi, who’s often referred to as “Da Pidgin Guerilla.” In the late ’90s, as a student at the University of Hawaii, Tonouchi had an epiphany while reading a poem by Eric Chock, who co-founded Bamboo Ridge Press, the leading publisher of Pidgin-centric writing. Titled “Tutu on the Curb”—“tutu” being Hawaiian for grandparent—Chock’s poem is expressive and comical: “She squint and wiggle her nose / at the heat / And the thick stink fumes / The bus driver just futted all over her.”

“I remembah being blown away by da Pidgin,” Tonouchi, who writes and speaks exclusively in Pidgin, says by email. “I wuz all like, ‘Ho! Get guys writing in Pidgin. And we studying ’em in college. Das means you gotta be smart for study Pidgin!’”

Tonouchi started flirting with his native language scholastically, first in his creative writing class, which got him thinking: If I can do my creative stuff in Pidgin, how come I no can do my critical stuff in Pidgin too? Over time, he started writing his 30-page research papers and his entire master’s thesis in Pidgin, “until eventually I just wrote everyting in Pidgin.” Part of the decision was practical. As a kid growing up on Oahu, he felt perplexed by the books he read. People no talk li’ dat, he thought. “Writing how people sounded seemed more real to me,” he says.

Since graduating, Tonouchi has dedicated his life to establishing Pidgin as its own intellectually rigorous and poetically descriptive language. He’s published multiple books of Pidgin poetry and essays, written a play in Pidgin, and co-founded Hybolics, a literary Pidgin magazine that’s short for hyperbolic, used when someone is behaving like a snooty intellectual: “Why you acting all hybolic for?” Perhaps most groundbreaking was an English class called “Pidgin Literature” that he taught at Hawaii Pacific University in 2005. It was regarded as the first of its kind: a college course fully dedicated to fiction and poetry in Pidgin. Yes, brah. He even lectured in Pidgin.

Over the years, Tonouchi has noticed a decline in Pidgin, particularly among the young. “When I visit classrooms as one guest talker, I see that we kinda losing da connection. Simple kine Pidgin vocabularies da kids dunno,” he says. “I tink Pidgin might be coming one endangered language.”

There was a period in my life, after I moved away for college, when I scrubbed Pidgin from my lips, my tongue colonized. “You talk so haole,” my mom would say half-jokingly, employing the Hawaiian word for “Caucasian.” I knew my tongue should loosen, should adapt to the inflection of my aunties and uncles, to the comforts of poke and Mom’s home-cooked shoyu chicken. I was home for the holidays, surrounded by friends and family, but instead my tongue stiffened, intent on proving that I had transcended the confines of the tiny island I called home. I was acting all hybolic.

It took me years to realize that shunning Pidgin meant shunning where I was from, the food I ate, the beaches I roamed, the people I loved. Today, it’s hard for me to fathom a Hawaii without Pidgin. Particularly in rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods, how else would locals, with a single sentence, signal their localness to one another?

On a recent visit home, I went to the beach. Oahu’s North Shore is a disorienting mix of sunburnt tourists and the very local; having lived in New York for more than seven years by that point, I imagined I looked like a cross between the two. As I sat in front of the crashing waves, a tanned surfer with sun-bleached hair approached me apprehensively to ask for a bottle opener. “Try wait,” I said, rummaging through my beach bag.

It was barely perceptible, but his face flashed with the comfort of recognition: He was talking to a kama‘aina, a local. After I handed over the bottle opener on my key ring, he had one more question. “You like one beer?”

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bidinahlaurellance · 8 years ago

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I want to talk for a moment about Teen Titans/Teen Titans Go! (the shows not the comics) and bear with me because this might be really long. I have a lot to say. Also it’ll be very generalized probably.

Let’s start with Robin (who I’ll probably refer to as Dick sometimes since they’re the same person even if it isn’t explicit). I have a particular attachment to Robin since he was my first love and has probably been my favorite hero for my entire life. I’ll be fair and say I probably have a bit of a bias towards him. Growing up, Robin was the true embodiment of a leader. He was brave, kind, and did everything and anything to protect Jump City and his teammates. While he was that, he was not without his flaws. Robin struggled with his identity, his lack of powers, and his tense relationship with his family (ie Batman). Despite his flaws and with the help and support of his teammates, he worked hard to overcome them and be the leader his team needed. He listened to them and while they fought sometimes, he trusted and valued them.

Compare this to TTG!, where Robin is quick to anger and envy. He does not listen to anything he perceives as a threat to his authority, he’s characterized as rude and selfish. He constantly wants powers and to always be at the center of attention and danger, viewing smaller missions as beneath him. While he shares the same skills and name as his TT counterpart, they are not the same. This version also whitewashes him which is extremely gross. Dick Grayson is Romani and has never been white. Despite this, he is seen making food in a way that makes fun of white people’s aversion to cooking with spices, implying that he is white. And for those bound to say that it could be another Robin, I raise you the fact that not only is it likely that none of the Robins are white (except perhaps Stephanie Brown although I can’t speak to that) and the fact that when Control Freak showed the TTG cast a bit of TT, Robin said that that was himself. Robin has shifted from leader and friend to someone almost unrecognizable.

Moving on to Starfire. Starfire is another of my favorite heroes and a person I would very much like to play in anyway I can. In TT, Star is kind and caring and generally upbeat, although she has storylines that make her face her fears, jealousy, and anger. From the betrayal of her sister to the racism she faces from Val Yor, Starfire has been shown to tackle her obstacles head on and finding her strength within herself. The episode “Troq” is one of the most powerful examples of her strength. Throughout the episode, she is called racial slurs and treated as inferior by Val Yor, which shows how she struggles with anger but still manages to save people and complete her mission. Same with the appearances of her sister Blackfire, who’s presence fuels Star’s fear and jealousy especially in her first episode. She was also somewhat of the voice of reason and the glue that bound the team members together, just take a look at “How Long is Forever?”

Now in TTG, Star is an airhead. Her language skills are exaggeratedly bad, she seems more concerned with her looks and self than with her teammates or her own struggles. Star has become the new girl stereotype that flies in the face of everything she was in TT. In TT, she was an immigrant. She learned and adapted to Earth while still holding onto and even sharing her own culture.

Victor Stone, aka Cyborg, is one of the most relatable DC characters to date and his TT version is no different. Cyborg has dealt with complex subjects like racism, disability, and feeling out of place/doesn’t belong. He’s smart and has a close relationship with Beast Boy, as they tend to do a lot together. Cyborg can be quick to frustration and take it out on his teammates, but instead of feeling sorry for himself, he realizes his mistakes and apologizes for them.

In TTG, he is relegated to the “dumb jock” who seems to only care about eating and making jokes. Also the symbolism of him being half man/half machine is lost as the amount of organic body he has changes. Instead of dealing with issues about humanity and what it means to be human, disability, and racism, Cyborg is nothing more than an empty shell who’s sole purpose is to eat and joke.

Similarly, Beast Boy was a character of great importance. He dealt with his own ideas of humanity and maturity. Throughout the series, Beast Boy is shown to be fairly immature since he is mostly seen playing video games and making food when he isn’t out on a mission. But he also has the emotional capacity to call out his teammates when they make mistakes and learn from his own. He deals with personal responsibility by getting a job outside of the Titans. Beast Boy deals with family issues and loyalty as shown by his relationship with the Doom Patrol.

While in TTG, Beast Boy is shown to be less intelligent than his team, lazy, and slobbish. None of those things describe Beast Boy (albeit he can sometimes be a bit lazy). Beast Boy had frequently helped and hung out with Cyborg, he has a vast knowledge about things he is passionate about (animals and geek culture), and he likes to do things and hang out with his teammates. While I will admit that he isn’t as scientifically inclined as his team, he does try his best to understand what they are explaining to him.

Now, onto Raven. Raven was a huge part of my life growing up and was someone I saw myself in. She doesn’t know how to handle herself around other people or start friendships. She struggles with the dark parts of herself and has a father who leaves heavy damage on her mental health. Despite all of this, Raven grows and connects with each of her teammates and fully trusts them. She does what she can to help and make the world a better place.

In TTG, she is seemingly cold and doesn’t feel any emotion but anger until you learn about her love for a cartoon series. Now let me preface this by saying there is nothing wrong about her loving a series, but to have Raven almost apathetic to everything else bothers me quite a bit. The meaningful connections she made with the people around her are lost. Raven makes jokes and smiles. She cares about her teammates and is grateful for them sticking by her after the mess that her father had created. But in TTG, as stated previously, that is all lost.

Finally, let’s talk about Batman. I for one loved the fact that Batman was nowhere to be seen in TT. Pretty sure it had everything to do with rights and other tv shows, but he wasn’t anywhere near Jump City or this show. Batman wasn’t the focus of this show, this show was about Robin and his teammates. Robin left Bruce and went to forge his own destiny. Despite the subtle nods to him, this show was never about Batman or his and Dick’s relationship. By adding him in every single episode, the focus is now shifted onto him. It makes sense for him not to be there since: 1.) it’s not his city; 2.) he has his own problems/villains to deal with; 3.) he isn’t mentoring Robin right now. By having him and Commissioner Gordon in episode, TTG has essentially said that Robin has no autonomy and that he can’t work outside of Batman. Also why Gordon? The Commissioner has time in his schedule to head over to Jump City to hang out with Batman while he watches his kid 24/7? There is no reason why Batman or Commis. Gordon have any reason to interact with the Titans. And if this were based on the comics, then okay where is Cassie? Where is Conner? Where is Donna Troy, Roy, Garth, Wally, Bart, etc? There is no reason for any of the adult heroes to show up in Teen Titans.

I think that’s all I have to say but I’ll probably think of something else too.

#my thoughts #teen titans #anti teen titans go

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mastcomm · 5 years ago

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The End of Australia as We Know It

SYDNEY, Australia — In a country where there has always been more space than people, where the land and wildlife are cherished like a Picasso, nature is closing in. Fueled by climate change and the world’s refusal to address it, the fires that have burned across Australia are not just destroying lives, or turning forests as large as nations into ashen moonscapes.

They are also forcing Australians to imagine an entirely new way of life. When summer is feared. When air filters hum in homes that are bunkers, with kids kept indoors. When bird song and the rustle of marsupials in the bush give way to an eerie, smoky silence.

“I am standing here a traveler from a new reality, a burning Australia,” Lynette Wallworth, an Australian filmmaker, told a crowd of international executives and politicians in Davos, Switzerland, last month. “What was feared and what was warned is no longer in our future, a topic for debate — it is here.”

“We have seen,” she added, “the unfolding wings of climate change.”

Like the fires, it’s a metaphor that lingers. What many of us have witnessed this fire season does feel alive, like a monstrous gathering force threatening to devour what we hold most dear on a continent that will grow only hotter, drier and more flammable.

It’s also a hint of what may be coming to a town, city or country near you.

And in a land usually associated with relaxed optimism, anxiety and trauma have taken hold. A recent Australia Institute survey found that 57 percent of Australians have been directly affected by the bush fires or their smoke. With officials in New South Wales announcing Thursday that heavy rain had helped them finally extinguish or control all the fires that have raged this Australian summer, the country seems to be reflecting and wondering what comes next.

Politics have been a focal point — one of frustration for most Australians. The conservative government is still playing down the role of climate change, despite polls showing public anger hitting feverish levels. And yet what’s emerging alongside public protest may prove more potent.

In interviews all over the fire zone since September, it’s been clear that Australians are reconsidering far more than energy and emissions. They are stumbling toward new ways of living: Housing, holiday travel, work, leisure, food and water are all being reconsidered.

“If there’s not a major shift that comes out of this, we’re doomed,” said Robyn Eckersley, a political scientist at the University of Melbourne who has written extensively about environmental policy around the world. “It does change everything — or it should.”

Professor Eckersley is one of many for whom climate change has shifted from the distant and theoretical to the personal and emotional.

Before the fires peaked last month, she and I had often spoken in dry terms about Australia and climate change policy. This last time, as she sat in a vacation home southwest of Melbourne, where smoky haze closed a nearby beach, she told me about a friend driving south from Brisbane, “by all these towns and farms he couldn’t imagine bouncing back.”

Australia, she argued, must accept that the most inhabited parts of the country can no longer be trusted to stay temperate — and, she added, “that means massive changes in what we do and the rhythm of our work and play.”

More specifically, she said, the economy needs to change, not just moving away from fossil fuels, a major export, but also from thirsty crops like rice and cotton.

Building regulations will probably stiffen too, she said. Already, there are signs of growing interest in designs that offer protections from bush fires, and regulators are looking at whether commercial properties need to be made more fireproof as well.

The biggest shifts, however, may not be structural so much as cultural.

Climate change threatens heavy pillars of Australian identity: a life lived outdoors, an international role where the country “punches above its weight,” and an emphasis on egalitarianism that, according to some historians, is rooted in Australia’s settlement by convicts.

Since the fires started, tens of millions of acres have been incinerated in areas that are deeply connected to the national psyche. If you’re American, imagine Cape Cod, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the Sierra Nevadas and California’s Pacific Coast, all rolled into one — and burned.

It’s “a place of childhood vacations and dreams,” as one of Australia’s great novelists, Thomas Keneally, recently wrote.

For months on end, driving through these areas, where tourism, agriculture, retirement and bohemian living all meet for flat whites at the local cafe, has meant checking reports for closed roads and wondering if the thick clouds of smoke in the distance mean immediate danger.

There’s an absurdity even to the signs. The ones that aren’t melted warn of wet roads. Just beyond them are trees black as coal and koalas and kangaroos robbed of life.

The fear of ferocious nature can be tough to shake. Fires are still burning in the state of Victoria, and to many, the recent rain near Sydney felt as biblical as the infernos the storms put out — some areas got more than two feet, flooding rivers and parched earth hardened by years of drought.

Last month in Cobargo, a dairy and horse town six hours’ drive from Sydney, I stood silently waiting for the start of an outdoor funeral for a father and son who had died in the fires a few weeks earlier. When the wind kicked up, everyone near me snapped their heads toward where a fire burned less than a mile away.

“It just hasn’t stopped,” said an older man in a cowboy hat.

No other sentiment has better captured Australia’s mood.

That same day, in the coastal town of Eden, government officials welcomed a cruise ship, declaring the area safe for tourists. A week later, another burst of fire turned the sky over Eden blood red, forcing residents nearby to evacuate.

It’s no wonder that all across the area, known as the South Coast, the streets in summer have looked closer to the quiet found in winter. Perhaps, some now say, that’s how it should be.

“We should no longer schedule our summer holidays over the Christmas season,” Professor Eckersley said. “Maybe they should be in March or April.”

“Certainly, we should rethink when and whether we go to all the places in the summer where we might be trapped,” she added.

David Bowman, a climate scientist in Tasmania who wrote an article calling for the end of the summer school holiday, which went viral, said Australia’s experience could help the world understand just how much climate change can reorder the way we live.

“You can’t pretend that this is sustainable,” he said. “If that’s true, you’re going to have to do something different.”

Smoke may be more of a catalyst than flame. For much of the summer, a fog of soot has smothered Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra. In Sydney alone, there were 81 days of hazardous, very poor or poor air quality last year, more than the previous 10 years combined. And until the recent rains, the smell of smoke often returned.

Mike Cannon-Brookes, Australia’s most famous tech billionaire, called it part of a broader awakening.

“It’s bringing home the viscerality of what science and scientists have been telling us is going to happen,” he said.

There’s unity in that, as so many have seen climate change up close and personal. But there’s also inequality. The air filters selling out at hardware stores last month cost close to $1,000 each. In December, I heard surfers in the waves at Bondi Beach deciding to get out early to avoid breathing in too much smoke and ash — but farther west, where working-class immigrants cluster, I met a bicycle delivery driver who said he could work only a couple of hours before feeling sick.

Mr. Cannon-Brookes said Australia could seize the moment and become a leader in climate innovation. Ms. Wallworth, the filmmaker, echoed that sentiment: What if the country’s leaders did not run from the problem of climate change, but instead harnessed the country’s desire to act?

“If only our leaders would call on us and say, ‘Look, this is a turning point moment for us; the natural world in Australia, that’s our cathedral, and it’s burning — our land and the animals we love are being killed,’” she said.

“If they called on us to make radical change, the nation would do it.”

In “The Lucky Country,” the 1964 book of essays by Donald Horne that is often described as a wake-up call to an unimaginative nation, Australians are deemed tolerant of mediocrity, but “adaptable when a way is shown.”

One afternoon, I traveled to the Sutherland Shire, near where Prime Minister Scott Morrison lives, with Horne’s comments on my mind.

Near a bus stop, I met Bob Gallagher, 71, a retired state employee with thick white hair. He felt strongly that the criticism of Mr. Morrison for not doing enough about climate change was unfair.

“The first thing the government needs to do is run the economy,” Mr. Gallagher said. “I just don’t understand what these climate change people want.”

I asked him to imagine a version of Ms. Wallworth’s dream — an Australia with a prime minister who shouted to the world: “What we all love, this unique country, is being destroyed by inaction. We’ll punch above our weight, but we can’t do it alone. We need your help.”

Mr. Gallagher listened without interrupting. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said. “I could support that.”

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juditmiltz · 7 years ago

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TRD‘s Miami event tackles sea level rise, new development, Moishe Mana and more

The Real Deal South Florida Showcase & Forum (Credit: Instagram @claudio.california)

More than 4,500 real estate brokers, investors and developers flocked to The Real Deal’s Fourth Annual Miami Real Estate Showcase & Forum on Thursday to get the latest intel from the industry’s movers and shakers, including Moishe Mana, Alicia Cervera Lamadrid and Art Falcone.

Forty-six exhibitors, including new development projects, lenders and brokerages, lined the path to the panel room at Soho Studios. Fortune International Group showcased its “Very Important Properties” with a VIP champagne lounge, while boutique development 303 Surfside enticed attendees with a chocolate fountain. Tesla displayed its Model X on the showcase floor, as attendees networked.

Moishe Mana sounds off The event, held at Soho Studios in Wynwood on Thursday, kicked off with a one-on-one by TRD South Florida Managing Editor Ina Cordle with developer Moishe Mana, who stood up to condemn President Trump and his “destructive” actions. “When he was chosen to be the Republican nominee, I declared it the moral bankruptcy of America,” Mana said, drawing applause.

The Israeli investor began exploring Miami neighborhoods in 2011 as he was traveling back and forth to Asia, he told the crowd. In Wynwood, Mana has assembled 40 acres where he plans to build the Mana Wynwood Americas-Asia Trade Center & International Financial Center, a trade hub and cultural campus set to break ground next year. He expects to bring Chinese partners and companies to the city. “There is no reason Miami can’t become the Hong Kong of the future,” Mana said.

Is South Florida drowning? The controversial topic of sea level rise packed the forum with attendees hungry for intel on how it will impact South Florida real estate.

Miami City Commissioner Francis Suarez, former U.S. Congressman Patrick Murphy, city of Miami Beach Engineer Bruce Mowry, and architect Kobi Karp spoke candidly about encouraging resilient buildings, changing city codes, engaging politicians and more to combat climate change. TRD‘s Editorial Director, Digital Hiten Samtani moderated the panel.

“Florida is at the forefront of design, innovation and code,” Mowry said. “Every developer wants to be on the cutting edge of that.”

Sea level rise, he said, is nothing to be afraid of but something to prepare for.

Over the next 15-20 years, if sea level rise continues at its current pace, Murphy asked, what does that mean for underground parking garages, streets and for real estate investment?

“What can I sell that for if there’s no place to park my car, [if I] can’t get to the streets? If that starts to happen, we have a big problem here in South Florida,” he said.

In Miami Beach, the city has been investing millions in raising streets – a measure that has drawn controversy as well as support. “At least we’re taking a step forward,” Mowry said. “Is there resistance? Yes. Are we making mistakes? Yes.”

Suarez, who’s running for mayor of Miami, is planning to propose incentives to reduce the carbon footprint within the city, including for owners of homes with solar panels and drivers of electric cars.

Commercial’s hot pockets Miami is somewhat immune to the doom and gloom that retail across the U.S. is facing, top brokers said at TRD’s last panel of the day.

But there are concerns about vacant storefronts and high rents, Chariff Realty Group’s Lyle Chariff said. He was joined by Tere Blanca of Blanca Commercial Real Estate, Avra Jain of the Vagabond Group and Jonathon Yormak of East End Capital. Cordle moderated the panel.

“As retail changes and fashion retailers change, we’re seeing a different trend. I believe the spaces we have will get filled up,” Chariff said.

Jain, who focuses on submarkets like MiMo and Little Haiti, said developers and brokers are working harder to keep their tenants. “When is it retail and when is it office? We’re seeing that there’s a shift and having adaptable spaces certainly helps,” she said.

Affordability on the retail side is almost as important as affordability on the rental side, Yormak said. His firm owns the Wynwood Arcade in Wynwood, home to the popular Salty Donut cafe. Food and beverage is a dominant force toward creating successful tenant mixes.

“How many retailers generate enough sales annually? We have to be very focused as we’re building on how much we’re going to change,” he said. “We’re at risk of destroying the fabric of what the community [Wynwood] has been as national retailers enter the market.”

Developers on moving product, launching new projects and more A trio of developers joined TRD for the “Sizing up the development cycle” panel. Edgardo Defortuna of Fortune International Group, Terra’s David Martin and Miami Worldcenter developer Art Falcone discussed the challenges they’re facing in a stagnant residential market with moderator Samtani. Defortuna spoke candidly about the slew of condo projects and the expectation that the market would have stayed hotter for longer.

In 2010, “there was a lot of need and a lot of demand and we all thought it was going to last for a long time,” he said. Since early last year, fewer projects have launched. Some developers are holding onto their land and some are forging ahead, like Falcone, who said he’s in his 14th year of working on Miami Worldcenter.

Issues like sea level rise and the further limits on legal immigration could hurt development, Martin added.

Tackling a shifting resi landscape South Florida’s top residential brokers led the panel on “Finding the buyers,” moderated by TRD’s Editor-in-Chief Stuart Elliott. EWM Realty International’s Ron Shuffield, Douglas Elliman’s Jay Parker, Cervera Real Estate’s Cervera Lamadrid, Coldwell Banker’s Nancy Klock Corey and Miami Real Estate Group’s Andres Asion were quick to acknowledge slow sales this year and an especially sluggish September thanks to Hurricane Irma.

Asion said social media images of flooded streets in Miami’s Brickell area belied the limited property damage in South Florida due to Hurricane Irma.

Pricing correctly is also key to closing a deal in this market, otherwise six months of work could amount to nothing, Shuffield said.

Elliott also surveyed panelists on sexual harassment in the industry in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein firestorm. They spoke of the importance of responsive leadership, reporting abusers and the frequency in which it happens.

Lamadrid’s advice to women: “You are who you are. You’re going to stand your ground the way you think you should stand your ground. It doesn’t matter how they want to treat you. It’s how you’re going to respond to that treatment,” she said. “Many times I have looked at guys and said ‘Would your mom be proud of you right now?’ That works pretty well.”

from The Real Deal Miami https://therealdeal.com/miami/2017/10/27/trds-miami-event-tackles-sea-level-rise-new-development-moishe-mana-and-more/ via IFTTT

#The Real Deal Miami

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ahotecoopeer-blog · 8 years ago

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Native American Tribes & the Indian History in Cold Spring, New York

The U.S. government's policies towards Native Americans in the second half of the nineteenth century were influenced by the desire to expand westward into territories occupied by these Native American tribes. By the 1850s nearly all Native American tribes, roughly 360,000 in number, lived to the west of the Mississippi River. These American Indians, some from the Northwestern and Southeastern territories, were confined to Indian Territory located in present day Oklahoma, while the Kiowa and Comanche Native American tribes shared the land of the Southern Plains.

The Sioux, Crows and Blackfeet dominated the Northern Plains. These Native American groups encountered adversity as the steady flow of European immigrants into northeastern American cities pushed a stream of migrants into the western lands already occupied by these diverse groups of Indians.

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Find Native American Indian Jewelry in Cold Spring, NY

The early nineteenth century in the United States was marked by its steady expansion to the Mississippi River. However, due to the Gadsden purchase, that lead to U.S. control of the borderlands of southern New Mexico and Arizona in addition to the authority over Oregon country, Texas and California; America's expansion did not end there. Between 1830 and 1860 the United States nearly doubled the amount of territory under its control.

These territorial gains coincided with the arrival of troves of European and Asian immigrants who wished to join the surge of American settlers heading west. This, partnered with the discovery of gold in 1849, presented attractive opportunities for those willing to make the long journey westward. Consequently, with the military's protection and the U.S. government's assistance, many settlers began building their homesteads in the Great Plains and other parts of the Native American tribe inhabited West.

Native American Tribes

Native American Policy can be defined as the laws and operations developed and adapted in the United States to outline the relationship between Native American tribes and the federal government. When the United States first became an independent nation, it adopted the European policies towards these native peoples, but over the course of two centuries the U.S. adapted its own widely varying policies regarding the changing perspectives and necessities of Native American supervision.

In 1824, in order to administer the U.S. government's Native American policies, Congress made a new agency within the War Department called the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which worked closely with the U.S. Army to enforce their policies. At times the federal government recognized the Indians as self-governing, independent political communities with varying cultural identities; however, at other times the government attempted to force the Native American tribes to abandon their cultural identity, give up their land and assimilate into the American culture. The U.S. government's policies towards Native Americans in the second half of the nineteenth century were influenced by the desire to expand westward into territories occupied by these Indian tribes.

Find Native American Indian Art in Cold Spring, NY

With the steady flow of settlers into Indian controlled land, Eastern newspapers published sensationalized stories of cruel native tribes committing massive massacres of hundreds of white travelers. Although some settlers lost their lives to American Indian attacks, this was not the norm; in fact, Native American tribes often helped settlers cross the Plains. Not only did the American Indians sell wild game and other supplies to travelers, but they acted as guides and messengers between wagon trains as well. Despite the friendly natures of the American Indians, settlers still feared the possibility of an attack.

Find Native American Jewelryin New York

To calm these fears, in 1851 the U.S. government held a conference with several local Indian tribes and established the Treaty of Fort Laramie. Under this treaty, each Native American tribe accepted a bounded territory, allowed the government to construct roads and forts in this territory and pledged not to attack settlers; in return the federal government agreed to honor the boundaries of each tribe's territory and make annual payments to the Indians. The Native American tribes responded peacefully to the treaty; in fact the Cheyenne , Sioux, Crow, Arapaho, Assinibione, Mandan, Gros Ventre and Arikara tribes who signed the treaty, even agreed to end the hostilities amongst their tribes in order to accept the terms of the treaty.

Navajo Jewelry is Celebrated Worldwide by American Indian Art Collectors

This peaceful accord between the U.S. government and the Native American tribes did not last long. After hearing tales of fertile land and a great mineral wealth in the West, the government soon broke their promises established in the Treat of Fort Laramie by allowing thousands of non-Indians to flood into the area. With so many newcomers moving west, the federal government established a policy of restricting Native Americans to reservations, small areas of land within a group's territory that was reserved exclusively for their use, in order to provide more land for the non-Indian settlers.

In a series of new treaties the U.S. government forced Native Americans to give up their land and move to reservations in exchange for protection from attacks by white settlers. In addition, the Indians were given a yearly payment that would include money in addition to food, livestock, household goods and farming tools. These reservations were created in an attempt to clear the way for increased U.S. expansion and involvement in the West, as well as to keep the Native Americans separate from the whites in order to reduce the potential for conflict.

History of the Plains Indians

These agreements had many problems. Most importantly many of the native peoples did not completely understand the document that they were signing or the conditions within it; moreover, the treaties did not consider the cultural practices of the Native Americans. In addition to this, the government agencies responsible for administering these policies were irked with poor management and corruption, in fact many treaty provisions were never carried out.

The U.S. government rarely completed their side of the agreements even when the Native Americans moved quietly to their reservations. Dishonest bureau agents often sold the supplies that were intended for the Indians on reservations to non-Indians. Moreover, as settlers demanded more land in the West, the federal government continually reduced the size of the reservations. By this time, many of the Native American peoples were dissatisfied with the treaties and angered by the settlers' constant demands for land.

A Look at Native American Symbols

Angered by the government's dishonest and unfair policies, several Native American groups, including groups of Cheyennes, Arapahos, Comanches and Sioux, fought back. As they fought to protect their lands and their tribes' survival, more than one thousand skirmishes and battles broke out in the West between 1861 and 1891. In an attempt to force Native Americans onto the reservations and to end the violence, the U.S. government responded to these hostilities with costly military campaigns. Clearly the U.S. government's Indian policies were in need of a change.

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Native American policy changed drastically after the Civil War. Reformers felt that the policy of forcing Native Americans onto reservations was too harsh while industrialists, who were concerned about their land and resources, viewed assimilation, the cultural absorption of the American Indians into white America as the sole long-term method of ensuring Native American survival. In 1871 the federal government passed a pivotal law stating that the United States would no longer treat Native American groups as independent nations.

This legislation signaled a drastic shift in the government's relationship with the native peoples- Congress now deemed the Native Americans, not as nations outside of jurisdictional control, but as wards of the government. By making Native Americans wards of the U.S. government, Congress believed that it would be easier to make the policy of assimilation a widely accepted part of the cultural mainstream of America.

More On American Indian History

Many U.S. government officials viewed assimilation as the most effective solution to what they deemed the Indian problem, and the only long-term method of insuring U.S. interests in the West and the survival of the American Indians. In order to accomplish this, the government urged Native Americans to move out of their traditional dwellings, move into wooden houses and become farmers.

The federal government passed laws that forced Native Americans to abandon their traditional appearance and way of life. Some laws outlawed traditional religious practices while others ordered Indian men to cut their long hair. Agents on more than two-thirds of American Indian reservations established courts to enforce federal regulations that often prohibited traditional cultural and religious practices.

To speed the assimilation process, the government established Indian schools that attempted to quickly and forcefully Americanize Indian children. According to the founder of the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, the schools were created to kill the indian and save the man. In order to accomplish this goal, the schools forced students to speak only English, wear proper American clothing and to replace their Indian names with more American ones. These new policies brought Native Americans closer to the end of their traditional tribal identity and the beginning of their existence as citizens under the complete control of the U.S. government.

Native American Treaties with the United States

In 1887, Congress passed the General Allotment Act, the most important component of the U.S. government's assimilation program, which was created to civilize American Indians by teaching them to be farmers. In order to accomplish this, Congress wanted to establish private ownership of Indian land by dividing reservations, which were collectively owned, and giving each family their own plot of land.

In addition to this, by forcing the Native Americans onto small plots of land, western developers and settlers could purchase the remaining land. The General Allotment Act, also known as the Dawes Act, required that the Indian lands be surveyed and each family be given an allotment of between 80 and 160 acres, while unmarried adults received between 40 to 80 acres; the remaining land was to be sold. Congress hoped that the Dawes Act would break up Indian tribes and encourage individual enterprise, while reducing the cost of Indian administration and providing prime land to be sold to white settlers.

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The Dawes Act proved to be disastrous for the American Indians; over the next decades they lived under policies that outlawed their traditional way of life but failed to provide the necessary resources to support their businesses and families. Dividing the reservations into smaller parcels of land led to the significant reduction of Indian-owned land. Within thirty years, the tribes had lost over two-thirds of the territory that they had controlled before the Dawes Act was passed in 1887; the majority of the remaining land was sold to white settlers.

Frequently, Native Americans were cheated out of their attolments or were forced to sell their land in order pay bills and feed their families. As a result, the Indians were not Americanized and were often unable to become self-supporting farmers and ranchers, as the makers of the policy had wished. It also produced resentment among Indians for the U.S. government, as the allotment process often destroyed land that was the spiritual and cultural center of their lives.

Native American Culture

Between 1850 and 1900, life for Native Americans changed drastically. Through U.S. government policies, American Indians were forced from their homes as their native lands were parceled out. The Plains, which they had previously roamed alone, were now filled with white settlers.

The Upshot of the Indian Wars

Over these years the Indians had been cheated out of their land, food and way of life, as the federal government's Indian policies forced them onto reservations and attempted to Americanize them. Many American Indian groups did not survive relocation, assimilation and military defeat; by 1890 the Native American population was reduced to fewer than 250,000 people. Due to decades of discriminatory and corrupt policies instituted by the United States government between 1850 and 1900, life for the American Indians was changed forever.

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sheisherestories-blog · 8 years ago

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The Other Side

Jane Bulfin. Born 11/11/1968. Irish.

“I spent a lot of that summer crying and exhausted. Ironing tea towels, overwhelmed by the responsibility and all the changes, hardly able to function.”

Growing up in a family of eleven, my parent’s main focus was just getting us through school. The two eldest went to college but for the rest of us apprenticeships seemed to be the best we could aim for.

Actually since my mother (in common with most women who reached adulthood in Ireland in the 50’s) didn’t work outside the home – though she worked very hard there - she didn’t really consider careers for us girls… There seemed to be an underlying assumption that we would marry and have children etc. The marriage bar (where women had to give up employment once married) was in force in Ireland until 1973 and since rural communities change slowly, it was still in practice in the area I grew up in until much later.

In school, we were given direction on applying to train as nurses, secretaries or in the hospitality trade, (one friend was actually discouraged from applying to train in childcare and was told to settle down and have a family of her own by the guidance teacher)! There was no mention of college or any direction on applying for third level support or even applying to colleges.

So, lack of information (in a pre-google world), lack of finance and even lack of encouragement were my main blocks. Also to be honest, I knew I wanted to get out of rural Ireland but didn’t have any clear idea what I wanted to do or any clear picture of what a career looked like and how to go about getting one. I had always been top of my class without any effort and had tended to downplay my abilities to avoid standing out. It didn’t help that I was chronically shy and had been bullied mercilessly in 2nd and 3rd year. I found it easier to coast and lived in a make believe world of books and art and let my schoolwork go to hell.

As a result, my leaving cert results were less than glowing. I hadn’t thought beyond school and hadn’t applied to any course so my only option was to take a factory job.

This was one of the most motivating experiences ever. I have never been so bored in my life. I’d had vague ideas of applying to art college but in the year I worked in the factory soldering wires endlessly, I met an couple of art students home for the weekend in Birr. Their picture of Art College and a realistic look at what I could earn made me think again.

One other huge influence in my life as a teenager was my grandaunt May. She left Kerry to immigrate to London after finishing secondary school at 18 in 1917. She worked in London for her entire career, living through two world wars and only coming back to Ireland to settle near her sister in Birr. She never married and made a good life for herself, travelling extensively and having a comfortable income. I got to know her very well from about the age of 15. I used to go in to Birr on a Saturday morning to help her with housework; in return, she paid me enough to go out and taught me to have some ambition. We became great friends and she encouraged me to go to college. I was unaware that she had put aside money for my college education until I told her that I had submitted my application form and had applied for an education grant. I was also saving everything I could from my wages, as I knew that my parents were in no position to help me. I bought a bike and cycled the 6 miles to Birr every day (I worked shifts so sometimes this meant cycling around midnight). I gave my mother some money for food and all, and the rest I saved (well I bought my first music system and went on a holiday to Holland as well).

Anyway, I arrived in University College Galway (now NUIG) as clueless as possible. I was staying with my Aunt and Uncle (a professor of medicine) in first year and in a houseful of cousins who were all graduates from doctors and engineers to Archaeologists. I remember going to register for my course (arts degree because I didn’t know what to aim at) and standing in line, I realised I needed to choose my subjects and with no more preparation than that, I ticked off my subjects: English, Italian, psychology and archaeology. Once I settled in, I loved college. I’d missed learning so much and this time I was prepared to work. I never wanted to work in a factory again. I made the top 25 in psychology but didn’t think I was suited to it so my degree became Archaeology and Italian. I had always wanted to travel and this seemed an ideal combination.

Unfortunately, I became pregnant in September at the start of my second year. I was 19. I was terrified. I came from a culture where being an unmarried mother was a huge stigma. I couldn’t tell my parents for months. I considered going away and giving the baby up for adoption to someone who could care for her better than a student might. My boyfriend decided to stay so we discussed marriage. I refused to get married until after the baby was born because I wanted him to have a chance to see what the reality of a child was. I finally got up the courage to tell my parents at Christmas and they were brilliant. My father didn’t want me to rush into marriage but I dug my heels in and said that if they didn’t give their consent I would marry without them as soon as I turned 21.

Another challenge was finding somewhere to live when the baby was born. I had moved out of my Aunts house in September, but most landlords wouldn’t want a student with a baby. Luckily, I had the money my grandaunt had given me for college and my boyfriend had a lump sum from an assault case. We bought a rundown house in the centre of town and started doing it up on a shoestring. I had my daughter Alvy on Saturday 20th May and sat the first of my Summer exams on the following Monday. The university had given me the option of deferring until the autumn exams but I was afraid I wouldn’t finish if I didn’t continue. I had the work done and somehow got through the next two weeks.

The exhaustion took its toll and the stress of new baby, exams, doing up a house and preparing for a wedding caused me to slip into depression. I spent a lot of that summer crying and exhausted. Ironing tea towels, overwhelmed by the responsibility and all the changes, hardly able to function. My boyfriend had no idea about being a parent. He was an only child and was studying for a PhD at the time. The care of the baby fell entirely on me and since I was on summer break, it seemed fair at the time. We married in September and I was back in Uni in October to tackle my final year. I think getting back into a routine, having childcare and having a focus outside the house helped me bounce back from my post-natal depression.

That final year was a struggle. I wasn’t going to be able to go to Italy so my Italian was definitely going to suffer but I was determined to get a good archaeology degree. It meant getting up at 5 or 6am to study even though the baby woke up every night at least once. Getting pregnant again at Christmas didn’t help the situation. I spent the next few months dealing with morning sickness and a baby while trying to do final year projects and exams. It was just a case of putting my head down and getting on with it.

I managed to graduate with an honours degree and went on to work in archaeology for a few years before life took another turn. In case I haven’t made it clear, having children so young and while in full time education was a challenge but I loved being a mother. Overcoming those early challenges have made me very adaptable and fairly fearless when it comes to change. I know I can deal with anything that life throws at me and come out the other side smiling and stronger than ever.

#internationalwomensday #Ireland #rural #woman #mother #stigma #youngmother #graduate #strong #sheishere #storieswehaventbeentold

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oldguardaudio · 8 years ago

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Radical Islamic Immigrants - Refugees turned Sweden into the RAPE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD - President Donald Trump was right!! Again!!

Radical Islamic Immigrants - Refugees turned Sweden into the RAPE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD - President Donald Trump was right! Again!

Rape and violence has exploded across Sweden due it's immigration policies. Listen to see what Sweden has done to itself.

By: Ami Horowitz

Ami Horowitz is an American media personality who is co-producer, co-director, co-writer, and star of the 2012 documentary U.N. Me, a critical examination of the United Nations. As of 2016, he lives in New York City.

Horowitz came to prominence in February 2017 when President Donald Trump appeared to suggest that there had been an increase of violence in Sweden committed by refugees, on the basis of a February 17, 2017 Horowitz interview on Fox News.

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sweet home two hot blondes dead Vikings

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and the swedish chef in order to put and

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report now add another thing this list

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Sweden is now the proud owner of the

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title the rape capital of Europe

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Sweden has always had a reputation of

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being a harmonious and liberal society

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this image has been shattered as rapist

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skyrocketed over the past five years at

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the same time

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Sweden has been going through a

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revolutionary demographic shift that has

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seen the country taking more refugees

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from Islamic countries than any Western

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nation in the world this immigration has

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led to culture clashes and to enclave of

0-57

self-contained societies across Sweden

0-59

this is Annika Henry frosting

1-02

she's the sweetest journalist who has

1-04

extensively covered the Middle Eastern

1-05

migration into sweet what we have is

1-08

first of all a very a a Swedish culture

1-11

and then we bringing less like last year

1-14

a hundred and ninety thousand people

1-16

that come from a very different culture

1-18

a culture that is in liberal that has

1-21

radically different views on women on

1-24

sexuality and gender on all these things

1-26

there's an explosion

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yeah you if we will be clashes this is

1-31

rick be a leafy northern suburb of

1-34

Stockholm also a completely Islamic area

1-37

the police have said is a complete no-go

1-39

for them and for journalists here a

1-43

60-minute screw from Australia's

1-45

attacked while doing the story on recall

1-47

in order to common area the prosper you

1-52

have to adapt to that culture and that

1-55

what we're doing in Europe is the

1-57

complete opposite they are saying how

1-59

can we adapt to you do you think that

2-01

swim has a responsibility to adapt to

2-04

the immigrants culture coming in let the

2-06

material should a woman who they come

2-08

here address you know modestly you know

2-10

with pants and sleeves is that important

2-13

it is our custom if you come to think

2-17

it'd be obviously every sweet said this

2-21

code you know my God's with this is not

2-23

for me

2-24

sometimes I said we go to link to this

2-26

care right it's good the dangerous here

2-28

sometimes sometimes yeah we found out

2-31

exactly how dangerous when while we were

2-34

setting up a shoot at a neighboring

2-35

location we were approached by five men

2-38

and told to leave while my crew took off

2-40

I state to simply ask why we had to

2-43

leave because i was still wired we have

2-46

the sound of what happened next

2-48

how come into the problem to the film

2-50

here I don't want to be Fenway I never

2-52

why what's the what's the way you look I

2-54

just a long one no yy-you want my life

2-58

about 50 mg I'm not doing anything

3-01

look show me what you can let go me what

3-03

you got on later you find that coffee I

3-06

don't I was not the first person

3-21

assaulted by gangs of immigrants nor

3-23

will i be the last but women are taking

3-26

the brunt of the explosion of violence

3-28

across sweet when I went to a police

3-30

station I noticed that the vast majority

3-32

that people waiting to report a crime or

3-35

women later the police officer who i met

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with told me that most were there to

3-39

report reap these attacks are happening

3-44

across suite including a rash of rapes

3-47

and music festivals over the past two

3-50

years dozens of young women some as

3-52

young as 12 were raped these festivals

3-54

across sweet by hundreds of young

3-56

immigrants they use the tactic where

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dozens of men surround one or more girls

4-01

in circles while the men the inner

4-03

circle sexually attacked their victims

4-05

the outer circle distract and keeps out

4-07

anyone who would stop it

4-09

the attacks have become so common that

4-11

some bands most notably Mumford & Sons

4-14

refused to play in suite has happened

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multiple times

4-18

import multiple victims then the issue

4-20

is that when it is reported this was

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widely known by the people who were

4-24

there the police that was on the scene

4-26

but then it was they put the lid on it

4-29

so we recovered they covered it up so we

4-32

didn't learn about this until much much

4-34

later while the police have told me that

4-36

the majority of the people that they

4-38

arrest for rape or from Islamic

4-39

backgrounds bra the official keeper of

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Swedish crime statistics curiously

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dropped the background of those arrested

4-47

from the official statistics the

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government has failed to recognize that

4-51

it's made a huge mistake and the the

4-53

European Union has failed to recognize

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that it's made a huge mistake when we

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have this free movement and the movement

4-59

of course is flowing toward the country

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with the most generous social benefit

5-04

system the type of benefits the

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immigrants receive in Sweden or

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significant and are all encompassing and

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include housing food education and

5-13

additional cash the government give

5-15

enough to to the immigration even

5-18

good work yeah yeah life is good or

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better than keeping the house

5-28

school always will have a facebook while

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the staggering increasing rape has made

5-34

some news

5-35

this phenomenon has been coupled with a

5-37

shocking and less widely reported

5-39

increase in violent crime in general

5-41

over the past couple of years several

5-43

dangerous immigrant riots have broken

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out and shootings across Sweden have

5-47

increased sharply undergo rasen and

5-50

Jacob extra our veteran and decorated

5-53

policeman with decades of experience in

5-55

are tasked with policing within the

5-57

immigrant community has there been an

6-00

increase in violence and crime here in

6-03

sweet more violence and order violence

6-06

with guns and whatever weapons are you

6-10

guys seeing on the streets you can see

6-12

your collection calls hand grenades from

6-16

the east dance and dance everything you

6-20

can find in Afghanistan to find here

6-22

doesn't sweden have very strict gun laws

6-24

for sure you know where and we get all

6-28

of them get new laws about counts

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tighten up more and

6-35

I think it's I think she's good but you

6-37

know did the device increase anyway this

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is a former police station which had to

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be moved a couple of years ago and the

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police will tell you that it simply

6-47

became too unsafe for them to have a

6-49

full-time presence here

6-51

this man has been playing the accordion

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for several years trying to bring some

6-55

musical cheer to December yet he has

6-58

faced numerous attacks my music movie

7-02

other people

7-03

boot Polly by the please you need you

7-09

need the police here

7-09

yeah the police they go back the policy

7-12

you would you go as far as to say that

7-14

these no-go areas are essentially states

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within the state

7-18

yeah most of the no-go areas like that

7-21

other areas where there if you're

7-23

pursuing somebody will simply stop and

7-26

not pursue that once they get into this

7-28

no go area you go if the place is

7-31

chasing a another car from some kind of

7-36

crime if they reached what we call know

7-39

where the police wouldn't go after you

7-41

see the violence really spreading across

7-43

wind into the city's at least one or two

7-46

times a week ago and let's say five

7-50

years ago how often

7-52

three times here really the increase in

7-58

this game is kind of crimes exponential

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I think record a quart of guard within

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the expected to be so so much so much

8-07

increase do you think that deliver

8-09

attempt to cover up the second times

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rather than that they they don't want to

8-18

seem racist is there sort of sensitivity

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and more people scared that if you

8-25

identify as communities type of crimes

8-28

should be labeled a racist of course I

8-30

think this is this issue's make people

8-33

nervous all over the world not only even

8-36

sweeter

8-37

let's make me nervous as well what if

8-40

we're talking about and you will be

8-42

called reason now this is you know race

8-44

car is very hard to 22

8-48

to deal with you know of course sure you

8-51

feel blonde like me and now to add these

8-54

words sweetness had dozens of people go

8-58

to fight for Isis and they're starting

9-00

to come back

9-01

sweet has had his first islamic

9-04

terrorist attack

9-08

do you think the sexual assault problem

9-10

is an Islamic problem or whatever and I

9-12

think it's a general problem among among

9-17

men

9-17

yeah the problem is in like this culture

9-22

of that culture the problem is

9-24

male culture i don't think the

9-26

immigrants the problem no it's not like

9-28

that's just like a tiny tiny bit of the

9-31

problem and like when that happened it

9-34

happens like it's because we didn't like

9-36

Rick bring them in the right way and I

9-40

don't see that connection at all i don't

9-42

i would very much like to see the

9-44

evidence of such a connection your

9-46

stinking it's almost racist to make that

9-48

connection

9-48

yes i think so is there a point we think

9-51

that sweet of them too much to bring

9-54

people into thinking now there is no too

9-56

much in helping people that is their

9-57

limit you think to how many immigrants

9-59

Sweden can take know

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Anu Bhalla demos Meal Mantra at a Rhode Island grocery store | Meal Mantra/Facebook New business are most vulnerable to disruptions caused by COVID-19 This story was originally published on Civil Eats. This spring, as Tarun Bhalla was testing out eight-ounce curry packets for a new line of meal kits, he found that they had a tendency to burst open in a shipping test. He’s been looking for a company that can manufacture stronger packets ever since, but he still hasn’t found one. And meetings are hard to arrange during a global pandemic. Bhalla and his wife Anu launched Meal Mantra brand curries in 2016, and they had just begun ramping up production when the coronavirus hit. They turned to the idea of selling meal kits after their biggest client closed, grant applications were denied, federal aid was out of reach, and bank loans were looking impossible. Bhalla has no backup plan and no clear path forward. “That’s all we think about,” says Bhalla. “We have to see this year out. It’s survival, that’s it.” The Bhallas and countless food entrepreneurs like them are essential contributors to a diverse economic landscape. They enrich cultural exchange through culinary diplomacy. They’re immigrants, they’re working parents, and they’re lifting themselves out of poorly paid wage work. And yet when it comes to staying in business during the pandemic, many have been left to their own devices. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Meal Mantra (@mantrameal) on Jan 25, 2019 at 4:47pm PST Earlier this year, the Bhallas struck a deal to sell their pre-made curries to Boston College, which wanted to add them to five cafeteria menus after a successful pilot. But when the campus closed down in the second week of March, Meal Mantra lost 20 percent of its revenue overnight, and left the Bhallas with a glut of product. The future of the company was suddenly in jeopardy. Self-professed marathon-running health nuts, the Bhallas had long been disappointed with the highly processed curries cluttering supermarket shelves. Anu, granddaughter of tandoori innovator Kundan Lal Gujral, adapted her recipes to incorporate fresh, New England-grown ingredients, and their lemongrass and galangal-infused Goan Curry won a Sofi Award in 2019, the same year their revenues hit $60,000. Meal Mantra was founded with money from a pharmaceutical business the Bhallas sold before immigrating from Delhi four years ago. Their daughter is heading to dental school and their son is a college sophomore. Tarun just turned 50 and the company was supposed to see him through to retirement. “We were just plowing that money back into our business hoping this would grow,” he says. “And it was growing.” In India, Tarun could pick up the phone and connect directly with buyers at colleges, grocery chains, and banquet halls. In America, finding new clients meant trade shows. “Food shows are the only way we can really get our product in front of our customers and get new accounts,” he says. “We signed up for six shows this year, but sadly none of them are taking place.” Retail hadn’t been a focus, but Meal Mantra curries had been available in a few local grocery stores. After the pandemic began, they shifted production from gallon bags to jars, and set their website up for online sales. Familiar customers placed orders, but it wasn’t nearly enough to make up for losing Boston College. Adapting to a new reality Companies like Meal Mantra are among the most vulnerable to disruptions caused by the coronavirus, according to Leticia Landa, deputy director of the food incubator La Cocina in San Francisco. “Anybody who doesn’t have a lot of savings isn’t going to be able to invest in the business in the way that it’s going to need to [adapt],” she says. “Businesses that are just getting started, or families that are in business together and there’s not any outside source of financial stability, that’s also challenging.” For the past 15 years, La Cocina has helped low-income women and immigrants create financially sustainable culinary food businesses. Today, they’re just helping their members survive. A standard incubator cohort is 34 businesses, but that number has almost doubled since a number of recent graduates are still working with the organization. Many of their restaurants and caterers have closed temporarily, but packaged food producers are struggling as well. People are cooking at home more than ever, but getting packaged products onto grocery store shelves is expensive and the margins are thin. “There’s very few small regional, local food producers making packaged foods who rely entirely on grocery [sales],” says Landa. “That’s one of the things they’re doing, and then they’re also selling at farmers’ markets or doing catering.” Supermarket shelves may be expensive and competitive real estate, but Lilian Ryland aimed to make in-store retail her coronavirus salvation. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Chef Lilian (@naijabukaseattle) on Apr 19, 2019 at 11:04am PDT The year had started off great for Ryland, the sole proprietor of Kent, Washington-based Naija Buka, which is named for the tiny pop-up roadside restaurants in her home country. “In Nigeria the best meals you’ll ever eat are from bukas,” says Ryland. Reliable weekly catering gigs brought in good money without too much stress (she refuses to work weddings), and without too much time away from her children. But when Seattle’s office buildings closed down, there were no corporate workshops or off-site meetings to cater. Office closures also cut into Ryland’s other main gig — preparing freezer-ready meals for busy professionals in her Nigerian expat community. Sales of those meals dropped 68 percent by April. “There was so much uncertainty; a lot of people didn’t want to spend that money to buy food,” Ryland says. “And they were at home, so they could cook.” Fortunately, Ryland had also begun producing shelf-stable sauces — first jollof, and then Everything Sauce — through Seattle’s Food Innovation Network and started pushing them alongside meal kits through social media and her website. But she knew she needed more outlets. In December, Ryland had pitched Naija Buka to PCC Community Markets, a Seattle-based co-op. They agreed to carry a couple sauces on condition that she eliminate vegetable oil and cornstarch. Ryland reworked the recipes, but finding a distributor wasn’t easy. “In Nigeria you can just jump out of your house, sell food, and people just come and buy it,” she says. Seven years ago, before joining her then-fiancé in America, Ryland was a journalist and digital editor in Abuja. She worked at Nordstrom after immigrating until she was eight months pregnant with her first child. She impressed other expats with her Afang soup and jollof, built a reputation at farmers’ markets, then switched to catering corporate events after having her second child. So it was frustrating when her applications and emails to regional food distributors were ignored, and infuriating when she did hear back. “They said, ‘We’re not sure, it’s not something that’s familiar to us’,” she says. “Which is offensive to me. They have a wall full of pasta sauces and here I am with the first ever authentic Nigerian jollof sauce — and you have a huge African community here.” It took five months before the Puget Sound Food Hub, a member-owned cooperative, agreed to distribute her sauces in May. Then, in mid-June, PCC started selling them at their newest location. It was exciting, and a big financial relief. Then, less than a month later, Naija Buka was available at all 14 PCC locations after loyal customers waged an informal campaign demanding greater availability. But not all Rylan’s peers have been so lucky. Fresh food vendors face another set of challenges Shelf-stable products like Meal Mantra curries and Naija Buka sauces can outlast temporary fluctuations in demand. They can be centrally produced and distributed easily. But fresh food vendors also have to be immediately responsive to market changes or their inventory spoils. “For food producers who are used to selling through farmers’ markets, catering, or doing groceries for the grab-and-go section, it’s pretty cost-prohibitive to ship cold unless people are buying a big quantity,” says Landa. Take Oyna Natural Foods. The three-year-old company makes kuku sabzi and other Persian frittatas, and it had just expanded its retail footprint from six to 20 stores early this year. Then, the company’s owners pulled out of the new locations when coronavirus restrictions brought in-store demonstrations to an end. “Education is definitely a huge part of our business,” says Oyna co-founder Mehdi Parnia. Parnia and his wife, Aisan Hoss, built up their culinary reputation face-to-face at farmers’ markets, where they could offer samples, introduce themselves and a little bit of their culture to connect with potential customers. But when it’s sitting alone on a grocery shelf, Parnia found that it is harder to introduce kuku to new markets. Oyna Natural Foods was expected to triple its business this year, according to Parnia. The one-time construction engineer took up food entrepreneurship after immigrating from Tehran to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2013 so Hoss could pursue a career as a choreographer. The couple started 2020 off focused on expansion, attending specialty foods trade shows, meeting store buyers, and finalizing new branding. Instead, when cities shut down, business contracted sharply. Sales at the six stores where Oyna Natural Foods was already established became inconsistent. One week, Parnia would restock his entire inventory, the next week nothing sold. Other small vendors disappeared from the shelves entirely. “The grab-and-go, ready-to-eat meals section has been significantly hit,” says Parnia. “Most of the shoppers were workers wanting to get lunch.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by OynaNaturalfoods (@oynanaturalfoods) on Jun 3, 2019 at 10:19pm PDT Parnia and Hoss rushed to create a web store, photographing kuku and assorted sauces themselves. They now make deliveries once a week throughout the Bay Area. Still, they’re selling about 400 a week as opposed to an average of 2,000 a week last year. They’ve experimented with shipping discounts and deals, and they’re courting new customers through social media, but Parnia finds that his inability to grasp the nuances of American pop-culture render Instagram a foreign language. Social media is “worse than going through the immigration process itself,” he adds. Money is tight. Parnia admits that if La Cocina hadn’t suspended rent they would have stopped production entirely, and even without that overhead the business is in survival mode. But the pressure to keep going is more than financial. “This is like a baby,” says Parnia. “We have been putting a lot of sweat and tears to make this business what it is today. If this goes away, it’s going to be a really, really painful and hard situation for me to figure out what to do.” Get to where the sales are Landa’s pandemic advice to La Cocina members is: “Cut your expenses as much as humanly possible; try to figure out where the sales are.” One such member, Hayward, California-based Alicia’s Tamales Los Mayas, is selling tamales to Bay Area school districts for their lunch programs as an option to be eaten at home during the pandemic. Meal Mantra was able to sell some leftover curry from their Boston College production at cost to a food relief program run by the city of Boston. La Cocina has been reaching out to food critics for reviews, and to national retailers like Williams + Sonoma, which carry assortments of specialty foods and packaged meals. They also sell La Cocina Food Boxes packed with nine items from a rotating cast of members. Oyna Natural Foods has been featured. So has Teranga, the baobab-based juice and energy-bar company from Nafy Flatley. In early 2020, Flatley had her products in almost 40 Bay Area retailers and did frequent in-store demonstrations. Flatley also catered events and she saw the crisis impact her business early on. By late March, roughly half of the stores and cafes selling Teranga products closed or started buying less. “It’s been very hard to see those stores close and [know they] might never come back again,” she says. Farmers’ markets became a stressful and profitless endeavor. Flatley directed customers to her online store and closed her four stands. By mid-March, she was stuck at home with three kids who no longer had schools to go to, trying to devise ways to salvage her business. By the end of the month, she was selling ready-to-heat meals through her website: Maafè one week, Nambè another, Yassa for Independence Day week. “It’s not making up for what we were making before, but at least it’s keeping us on the market,” she says. “It’s keeping us producing. It’s keeping in people’s minds that we’re not closed.” The private meals are more work. It takes longer to package individual portions than to prepare catering trays, and only four businesses at a time are allowed in the La Cocina kitchen, which is half the businesses typically allowed to operate there at a time. There are additional costs as well. Flatley pays extra for eco-friendly containers. She has a reserve of imported baobab and hibiscus, but ginger has doubled in price. “It’s very difficult for me to increase my prices because I don’t believe in selling expensive food,” she says. “Everybody should have good, healthy food and it shouldn’t cost an arm and a leg.” The extra labor is offset by Flatley’s husband, who delivers meals, restocks store shelves, and buys supplies. But he can only help because he is no longer working. The family depends on Teranga now as its sole source of income. “I would like to move forward with all of the goals and plans and ambitions I’ve had since the beginning,” says Flatley. “That’s one of the reasons I immigrated to the United States. I think the American dream is still possible for me and my family.” Flatley, who is from Senegal, worked in marketing before leaving to care for her firstborn son, born premature, and her mother, who was diagnosed with dementia around the same time. Selling the juices and energy bars her family made and sold back home when she was a child through word of mouth led to a new career path that she could balance with family. But, as of early July, she says, revenue had been slashed in half. And while Teranga isn’t operating at a loss, it can’t provide a cushion for emergencies or next steps either. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Teranga (@terangalife) on Nov 2, 2019 at 1:15pm PDT Federal bailout fails small businesses All the entrepreneurs who spoke with Civil Eats for this article are wary of taking on debt, and some distrust banks outright. “I’ve been denied loans because of who I am and what I look like,” says Flatley. “I have good credit. I can show them proof of how the business is sustainable and is growing every year, but they don’t care about that.” However, given the dire circumstances, even wary business owners have looked into federal relief programs this spring. PPP loans were met with widespread confusion over who qualified and how to apply. When eligibility opened to owners, gig workers, and the self-employed, the confusion worsened. Banks were inundated with applications, and those without an existing business relationship with the bank were all but guaranteed to be lost in the chaos. “It’s the big players that have relationships with their banks,” says Meal Mantra’s Bhalla, who doesn’t even have a U.S. credit score. La Cocina was able to secure a PPP loan and keep its full staff, who researched relief programs across the governmental strata. The organization partnered with other San Francisco community agencies, and tried to find the best options for each of their members. Not everyone qualified for assistance, but Landa says that everyone who did apply got it. La Cocina also successfully raised over $500,000 to create an in-house emergency relief fund. But most small food producers don’t have La Cocina in their corner. “It was super confusing the whole time. And they kept changing the rules,” says Landa, noting that she’s a native English speaker born and raised in the U.S., college educated, and familiar with institutions. Anyone newly immigrated, speaking in their second language, or unaccustomed to traditional banking institutions would have found the PPP process impenetrable, she said. None of the entrepreneurs we spoke to received first-round federal relief. Several applied for grants, and some received them. Since she spoke with Civil Eats, Flatley applied for a loan through the Small Business Administration. “I was granted a loan, which is far from enough but I will use that for now until other opportunities come up,” she says. Seeking a path forward As the pandemic rages on, there’s no clear future for most of these small food businesses. In Portland, Oregon, Wambui Machua opened Spice of Africa in mid-February with the intention of serving lamb burgers, curries, and Kenyan tacos in a new food hall — but when that closed down in the spring, she had to sit tight until customers returned in mid-June. But sitting tight didn’t come easy to an ambitious entrepreneur who has been building her business for over a decade, including catering, farmers’ market sales, and classes. After graduating with a degree in business management, she pitched a cooking class to Portland Community College with a home-made brochure. “I started my business to share and educate people about my culture,” says Machua, who hails from the Kikuyu tribe in Central Kenya. Last year, Spice of Africa brought in approximately $100,000, its most successful year. Machua would book three, four, sometimes more gigs in a day, delegating tasks to eight or 10 contract workers as needed. After the coronavirus hit, she worked alone staffing one farmers’ market stall on weekends. There was never any question of shutting down and finding work elsewhere. “My mother says that I’m not employable, because I have been my own person for way too long,” she says. Things could have been worse. Even with a teenage daughter, Machua has low expenses and a stable home. The landlord of her restaurant suspended rent, and the angel investor who backed the kitchen build-out did the same. Regular customers called in bulk orders of samosas to pick up at the farmers’ market. Then, in late June, she accepted an offer to teach an online cooking class. Going virtual would be an adjustment—there would be less dancing, no ability to sample other people’s dishes. But the first virtual class went so well Machua began setting up her own. After three months, restrictions on indoor dining were relaxed in Portland, but Machua wasn’t sure whether customers would feel safe enough to return. She hoped so — she would have to start paying rent again — and had been passing out discount cards at the farmers’ market. But with coronavirus infections climbing, she also didn’t want a crush of customers at the counter. It was time to look into delivery apps and hire a business manager. Everyone Civil Eats spoke to is slowly plotting a path forward. Nafy Flatley worries about the increase of infections in California but remains optimistic about opening a bricks-and-mortar location for Teranga at the Municipal Marketplace, a public-private venture in San Francisco that will offer kitchen and retail space to several La Cocina incubator graduates. Construction has been delayed, but she still holds out hope that it will open. “I have a deep belief that we’ll recover and bounce back and life will be normal again,” Flatley says. “We don’t know when that’s going to be but slowly, step-by-step, we have to walk towards our goals.” Mehdi Parnia wants to make kuku sabzi a regional sensation, then expand the brand nationally. Positive feedback from trade shows, and the interest from retail outlets, gives him reason to believe such growth is possible. For now, Parnia has been in talks with Tastermonial, an online market and food box company catering to people with specific dietary needs. Although Lilian Ryland is doubtful her catering business will rebound, she’s still invested in the Seattle-area food scene. She wants to see local farmers grow crops that African chefs can use instead of dried imports. One earlier attempt at cultivating the scotch bonnet peppers that give her sauces a kick failed, but she believes the Nigerian community alone could drive market demand. Tarun and Anu Bhalla are taking the longview, as they work to find stronger sauce packets for Meal Mantra. As worried as Tarun admits to being, he also believes they have a proven product that will become more popular over time. In the meanwhile, they’ve introduced a few chutneys that they’ve been selling online and at the farmers’ market. As La Cocina’s Landa sees it, the greater community shares some responsibility in supporting small business owners who add diversity to the culinary marketplace, and — through their sauces, dishes, and immersive cooking classes — to the variety and complexity at the heart of American culture. “I’m hoping that there’ll be continued interest in supporting these businesses,” she says. “Pay attention to focusing on smaller, local brands when you do your grocery shopping.” • Immigrant-Led Food Startups Face an Uphill Battle During a Pandemic [Civil Eats] from Eater - All https://ift.tt/3bMdmu5

http://easyfoodnetwork.blogspot.com/2020/09/immigrant-led-food-startups-face-uphill.html

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