The Spice of Life

Indian Food and Multicultural Identity.

My grandmother is the Indian matriarch of a mixed race family.  Like many mixed kids, I am often faced with questions like, “What are you?” “Where are you from – no like where is your family from?” While this can be frustrating, I take great pride in my family history and background. When she was 16, my grandmother, Anna Spudich (née Cownan), whom we call “Ammi”, immigrated to the US from Kerala in the Southern region of India. She was the eldest daughter of seven children in an upper middle class family and her father thought she would do well attending university in the United States. 

I asked my grandmother about her relationship with food starting at the time she moved from India to the US: 

“We had a cook in the kitchen, and a young boy who [shopped at the market] and my mother, a gifted cook, supervised the food making. I came to a small catholic college near Louisville Kentucky in 1954. Food I got in the dining room – roasts, fried chicken and boiled vegetables and a lot of dessert – was unfamiliar and tasteless to me, so I had a great deal of trouble eating. A kind African American cook in the kitchen noticed my plight and, on the side, made me Minute rice and hot sauce and that was a major part of my diet, till I got a bottle of hot sauce myself and bathed everything in the sauce and ate it.”

The plan was always for my grandmother to return to India after school to become a doctor. However, in Woods Hole, Massachusetts she met my grandfather. My grandfather, Jim Spudich, grew up in Benld, Illinois in a Croatian and Polish family. They were married in 1965, two years before the ruling in Loving v. Virginia that legalized interracial marriage in the United States. My mom was born that year, in 1967, thus beginning my multiracial family. 

My grandmother recalls reaching out to aunts in India for recipes and tips when she was first married because she longed for Indian flavors and meals that tasted like her childhood. In an article for The Washington Post, Indian actress and author of the cookbook, An Invitation to Indian Cooking, Madhur Jaffrey details a similar experience. Her mother mailed her a handful of recipes from home that were quite vague in instruction. She realized that she could “fill in the blanks by drawing on her taste memories: Her palate had been recording this knowledge all along” (Sen, 2023).  Similarly, my grandmother knew the flavors she had been missing, she just needed some guidance from relatives back in India as to what to get and how to use it most effectively to evoke those flavors.

When my mom, Rani, and aunt, Serena, were very young their family spent time in Cambridge, England and Bangalore, India and my grandmother emphasized the fact that her daughters learned to savor Indian food and developed an appreciation for the cuisine that was important for her to share.  When I asked her about the role food has played for her in raising mixed daughters and grandchildren she said,

“​​In many ways, food expands one’s view of global cultures, and awareness that there is more than one way to be alive and has added to their respect and awareness of global cultures and their place in the global community. They are American but they are also products of global cultures.”

My brother, Alex, and I are one-quarter South Indian, one-quarter Ukrainian Jewish, one-eighth Croatian, one-eighth Polish, one-eight English, one eighth French. Over the years my brother and I have had many conversations about what it means to be a mixed kid and the somewhat unique way that mixed kids go through the world. It also differs, even between him and me. My brother is named Alex, one of the most common names in America (though funnily enough he is named after my grandmother’s eldest brother, Aki, whose Syrian Christian name was Alex). On the other hand, I have an Indian name, Anjali (UHN-juh-lee), that is shockingly difficult for people to pronounce. This immediately makes people question my background while it may make them assume that Alex is just white. Similarly, my mom has an Indian name, Rani, while her sister doesn’t.  In addition, my mom and I have a darker complexion than our respective siblings.

Something that has always surrounded my brother and my mixed experience is Indian food. My grandmother is the closest ancestor to have emigrated from another country and over the years, five of her seven siblings moved to the US as well. Many of them congregated in the San Francisco Bay Area, all within a 45-minute radius of where I grew up. This meant that at many dinners at my grandmother’s house and most whole family functions there was always an abundance of South Indian cuisine.  

However, I have found that some of the complexities in my internal sense of cultural identity exist on the plate. After getting to Oberlin I started casually attending events held by the South Asian Student Association (SASA). Many researchers have found that when interviewing people about the multiracial experience, a sense of “commonality” is often emphasized (Törngren et al.). I wanted to try to establish myself as part of this community to try to combat feelings of not belonging.  

I immediately realized that I didn’t know what many of the dishes were. I felt like with my light skin and lack of knowledge I stuck out like a sore thumb. I found myself curious about whether other mixed kids feel this way. I decided to interview my brother, three of my cousins (also a quarter South Indian), and my close friend (with whom I attend SASA events), who is half Indian. I first asked how much they feel being Indian plays into their identity as a whole and about their favorite dishes. The questions that yielded the most intriguing responses were about the desire to learn to cook Indian food and how much they felt Indian food affected their sense of identity.

First I interviewed my friend, Sahil. Sahil grew up in Seattle with an Indian mother and white father. Something unique about Sahil is that unlike me, he has spent extended periods in India. Sahil’s mother is also South Indian, though her family is from Maharashtra. When I asked him about his relationship with food and culture, he shared an anecdote from childhood.  

“Food has made me feel ostracized. Like when I was a kid I remember bringing Indian food to school for lunch and people would say it smelled bad and people wouldn’t want to sit next to me and that would make me like not wanna eat or throw the food away.”  

My cousin, Indira, also shared a memory of bringing an Indian dessert to school and having a classmate tell her it looks like a ringworm or a “disease you have up your butt”.

Another quote from Sahil that I found interesting was his thoughts on the importance of learning to cook Indian food.

“I’m not like a great cook, but because it’s important to all these people in the family it is important to me. I also think my mom especially emphasized the need for me over my sister to know how to cook because in India there’s just like…the family…the domestic life is so rigid and women are always the ones who are expected to cook meals – and that’s the same in other countries too but in India, it’s like overwhelmingly so. And so my mom really wanted to make clear that, in the future when me and my sister get together or we’re like living together, I’m gonna be the one cooking.”

This concept was further emphasized by Anita Mannur in Culinary Fictions: Food in South Asian Diasporic Culture. She writes about how many Indian diasporic women are made to believe that the perfect execution of a dish, such as a mango chutney, is showing faithfulness to the culture.

According to my Alex, and cousin, Hana, learning to cook Indian food is a way of staying connected with our grandmother’s culture. Alex said,

“I feel like I need to uphold some “Indian-ness” by myself and I can do that by cooking. I really want to master Ammi’s lamb curry and Regiauntie’s (our great aunt) egg curry.”

Hana shares Alex’s love of egg curry saying,

“I think learning to cook Indian food is something I would love to do! Although as of now I only really know how to make egg curry, but honestly that recipe specifically is more important to me because Ammi used to make it for us and it feels particularly connected to me.”

Clearly their love of our grandmother’s Indian food is indicative of a very real bond and sense of identity, however some argue there are other ways mixed kids must “prove” themselves.

At an early age, I began to feel that if I can’t tolerate a dish with a certain spice level it somehow makes me less Indian. I remember being in elementary school and eating curry at a class potluck with Prathmesh, the only other Indian kid in my class. He was teasing me and saying that if I couldn’t handle the spice of the dish I wasn’t Indian. Prathmesh’s mother, also named Anjali, had immigrated from India and both of his parents were Indian. I felt he was surely right as he was even more immersed in Indian culture than I was.

Hana noted feeling very White when dining with South Asian friends at Indian restaurants where she finds herself drinking water and blowing her nose. In my conversation with Sahil, he added that people love to make those jokes to mixed kids. On the other hand, Alex does have a hotter spice tolerance (specifically Indian spice) than I do and finds it validating.  

Another concept commonly associated with being multiracial is being “white-presenting” or “white-passing”. Friends and family say that my brother is more “white-presenting” and that I look more “racially ambiguous.” Indira was able to put her experience very nicely into words.

“Even if you don’t like appear to have the experience of being Indian in the way you experience the world you still have those cultural connections and I do think like one of the kind of interesting moments is like you go out to Indian food with friends…and you just kind of have knowledge about food…and I think that is a way that I feel kind of connected and can feel proud of being a quarter Indian compared to other moments where I guess I feel a little bit more self-conscious about meeting someone and sharing that I’m a “person of color” which I don’t feel like I am.”

She also described a conversation with our grandmother where my grandmother made clear that even though she has her own narrative and cultural experience, the rest of the world does perceive her as white and we need to remember that when engaging with communities of color. 

To look at my family from yet another point, my dad, Dave, who is white, has learned several South Indian recipes over the years. I asked him about his relationship with Indian food as someone who married into an Indian family and as a cook. He had never been exposed to South Indian food before meeting my mom, an avid South Indian food enthusiast but not a cook. He hadn’t tasted it, much less cooked it himself, but as soon as he did he found himself enamored with it. He’s always had a sense of adventure in the kitchen and he saw an opportunity to learn about a new cuisine from my mom and her family. I also asked him about how his interest in South Indian cooking may have impacted the mother-in-law/son-in-law dynamic between him and my grandmother. He fervently responded that it had completely enriched their relationship. He believes that my grandmother is a born teacher and is very passionate about her culture and that his interest was one way that he was more embraced by her. I asked him if he would say that his interest in South Indian cuisine has allowed him and my grandmother to have a more personal relationship that they may not have otherwise. “1000%”. He feels that it has allowed him to relate to her and her family in a somewhat unique way. They love to talk about techniques and dishes and she even brings spices back from India for him.

One of my grandmother’s favorite food-related family memories is when she went to visit my cousins in Connecticut.  When she arrived, my cousin, Nathaniel, who was 5 at the time, presented her with a list of dishes he’d wanted her to cook while she was staying with them.  My great-aunt Alice Kochamma’s egg curry, vada and lentil curry, and my grandmother’s American specialty, pasta with tuna, nicoise olives, and red pepper flakes.  This is representative of the building of our family.  A dish that is made by my grandmother’s sister-in-law back in India, an Indian dish that my grandmother makes often, and an American dish she likely learned to make early on in her time in the US to appeal to my grandfather’s American palate early in their relationship.

Indian food has brought my family together. It has given us something to remember each other by. I hope to one day be standing in a kitchen with my brother and three cousins cooking a meal full of Ammi’s dishes – Indian and American – telling stories, making jokes, sharing tips she taught us, and texting her photos along the way. Together in the heat of the kitchen, making the food of our family.

Anjali Blacker is a second year Sociology major, minoring in Music Studies, with an integrative concentration in Arts Administration and Leadership graduating in spring of 2026! She loves food, family, and community and is so happy to be able to share the history of this part of her background.

Bibliography

Törngren, Sayaka Osanami et al. “Understanding multiethnic and multiracial experiences globally: towards a conceptual framework of mixedness.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 47:4, 2021, pp. 763-781

Sen, Mayukh. “At 90, Madhur Jaffrey relishes in her role as a groundbreaking food writer.” Washington Post, 27 November 2023