Photo by Taekwonweirdo/Flickr (Creative Commons)
A "Chinese American turkey" stuffed with sticky rice, red chili pepper, water chestnuts, Taiwanese sausage and other goodness, November 2010
In their quest to assimilate, generations of immigrants from non-turkey-eating parts of the world have eaten or at least tried to eat turkey on Thanksgiving. But I’m going to let you in on a secret some may find tantamount to treason, or at least a deportable offense: Many of us don’t care for it all that much.
Now, there are those who know how to do turkey. Immigrants from southern Mexico, for example, part of the bird’s native stomping ground, serve it seasoned with chile and smothered in mole, a preparation that some Oaxacan restaurants in Los Angeles make for Thanksgiving take-out orders.
But the mild tasting American-style roasted bird traditionally served in the U.S. doesn’t go over so well with everyone who encounters it as a newcomer. The solution? Claim it. Make it our own. Or if that fails, don’t mind the turkey and eat something else, like a nice kebab.
Based on our own experiences, three colleagues and I have written up a sampling of four of the truly all-American feasts that go on every Thanksgiving holiday. Buen provecho.
Kim Bui, KPCC’s OnCentral blog editor, writes about her Vietnamese American Thanksgivings:
My mom hates turkey.
She’s long complained that it’s dry, annoying to cook and all around not good. Every year for Thanksgiving, she would push for something tastier — duck, cornish game hens, something. And every year, my siblings and I would retaliate. We are in America, we said, we need to have cranberry sauce and dry turkey and mashed potatoes. We wanted to assimilate.
Then, every year for Christmas, we’d realize the error of our ways. So our December turkey has instead always been a traditional Vietnamese dish. Pho, nem nuong or something else. However, my mom loves yule logs and fruitcake, so we were subjected to one or the other every year.
This cycle (and yes, we had the same argument every year) became symbolic of the struggle my family has had since my parents immigrated here. The younger kids would want to be as American as possible, my parents would want to hold on to our culture, and in the end, we met in the middle.
Last year, my parents were in Vietnam for Thanksgiving, so some friends and I put together an orphan Thanksgiving. We made the traditional turkey, potatoes and yams. But we tossed in some Asian spices.
No matter what I’ve eaten — dry turkey, juicy duck, or soupy pho — I’ve always been thankful for our arguments and my parent’s staunch resistance to adopting “too” much American culture. I am firmly both American and Vietnamese and my taste buds are representative of that.
By the way, this year, we are making a turkey. But my mom is seasoning it Vietnamese style. My belly is grumbling already.
Tami Abdollah, KPCC’s new education blogger, writes about her Thanksgiving experiences as a Persian-Chinese American:
As a kid growing up, Thanksgiving at my house was traditionally untraditional. I didn’t think we were much different from the typical American family. We would stuff our turkey with Persian food, such as sabzi polo (rice cooked with vegetables, beans and chicken), and we would have delicious tahdig (crispy rice) and a few Chinese vegetable and meat dishes spread across the table. My parents would both take part in preparing foods from their homelands and spinning the recipes together into a truly diverse mix of Persiachimerican, and create, in my opinion, an actually very American meal.
It wasn’t until I was a junior in college that I tasted what I believe (to this day I’m not sure) was traditional stuffing and had a semi-”normal” Thanksgiving – as a student abroad in France. Even then, I suspect those French chefs added their own apolomb to the sauces and flavorings. Last year I spent Thanksgiving in New Zealand with a mix of Kiwis and Americans, roasting local vegetables and eating chicken. The year before I was in Iraq with a hodgepodge of expats and a delicious giant turkey brought into the country in a well-packed suitcase from Jordan. Many gave thanks for its safe arrival.
This will be my first Thanksgiving back home in L.A. with family in years. Nostalgia is often hard to beat, but I am sure that my turkey day will remain traditionally untraditional still. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because of this unity of diversity. No matter where we are from, or what we do to celebrate the holiday of Thanksgiving, we all ultimately have reasons to give thanks.
