Multi-American ®

When I featured Hawaii’s Spam musubi last month on a list of unsung ethnic delicacies, I never imagined the reaction it would provoke among readers and the general public.

My shout-out to the humble snack – a slice of seasoned and grilled Spam atop sushi rice, wrapped with a piece of nori – inspired the most feedback I’ve ever received about a particular dish. It also inspired an excellent recent piece in Hyphen Magazine, replete with the master’s thesis-sounding title of “The End of Spam Shame: On Class, Colonialism, and Canned Meat.”

In it, author Sylvie Kim wrote about growing up on a tight budget in a Korean American family of five, a childhood “chock-full of nitrates, sodium, and an amalgam of four-legged animals chopped and cured into uniform cuts of salty goodness that was inexpensive, easy to heat, and lasted for damn near forever.” There were sliced hot dogs that made their way into kim bap, Vienna sausages, and Spam, made delicious when cubed and added to kimchee fried rice.

Then, this admission:

From roughly sixth grade to age 23, I had to eat my Spam in private.

I suffered from class-based Spam shame.

We grew up in the Midwest where Asian faces weren’t in abundance and our supposed weirdo Oriental ways in regards to language, customs, and food were already conspicuous enough. To throw in a hearty love for a meat that had become synonymous with poverty or “trashiness” in American pop culture would be making that bullseye even brighter on a young lass like me, who was preoccupied with cultural assimilation.

Articles have often remarked on the influence of Spam abroad, particularly in Asia and the Pacific Islands, often in contrast to how the luncheon meat is regarded as substandard or comedic fodder by the average American (or Briton, if you count Monty Python’s legendary Spam sketch from which the term “spamming” for junk e-mail was born). Only in the recent economic downturn and rising food prices did the focus shift to America’s Spam consumption as a whole — rather than as kooky culinary statistics of foreign countries or ethnic groups — as sales for the oft-maligned meat surged.

This weekend, another ode to Spam musubi appeared, this one on AnnArbor.com. Contributor Frances Kai-Hwa Wang wrote about the handy nori-wrapped treat’s role as picnic food:

I recall the many family picnics we have had in Gallup Park and the fun of preparing Spam musubi, onigiri, inari sushi, edamame, teriyaki chicken. Watching for rain, I start cooking early in the morning, pack everything up into beautiful big bento boxes, throw in our much-loved Hello Kitty picnicware and our trusty Nepalese picnic blanket, and hop onto our bikes for a day at the park.

This isn’t what other people bring to picnics? What is normal picnic food?

Why, Spam musubi, of course.