" . . . There’s a phrase for Dao’s experience: the lunchbox moment. While the food in these stories is diverse, from Filipino lumpia Shanghai to Cameroon peanut sauce, the emotional experience is similar: self-consciousness about cuisine whose supposedly 'stinky' flavors signal racial and cultural difference. In these accounts, school cafeteria meatloaf and tater tots are symbols of a white American culture that rejects immigrant children.
The alienating symbolism of cafeteria food is as old as the National School Lunch Program. But it wasn’t always that way. While the National School Lunch Act was signed in 1946, the country’s first school food programs began decades earlier, in the immigrant tenements of turn-of-the-century cities. In these early lunchrooms, diversity ruled. . ."
The cafeteria program started in immigrant communities.
I remember going to elementary school in the late '60s and feeling self-conscious about some of the unusual things my mom would pack in my lunches. They weren't unusual for our family, but they were certainly atypical from what my peers would have. It was easy to pass baos as a 'Chinese sandwich', but some of the more 'ethnic' foods were oddities to my classmates. My school was more diverse than most, but while there was a good mix of white and black kids, I was usually the only Asian in my class, and one of only about a dozen in the whole school.
I have to say that my friends never made fun of my lunches, but I always wanted to fit in - a sandwich, some chips, and a piece of fruit. The Japanese have a saying: "deru kugi ha utareru (the nail that sticks up gets hammered down)", and I didn't want to be that nail. (ISTR the Chinese have a similar saying.) I really identified with Toula in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" in that regard.
When my own kids were in school, my experiences informed my choices when packing their lunches, but fortunately, they had a much more diverse and enlightened student body, and most of their friends - even the non-Asian ones - knew what kinds of delights I often packed and they sometimes wanted a share. I knew to make extra SPAM musubi, for instance, for their friends, too.
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