Eating the Hyphen

In the first piece, "Eating the Hyphen" I really liked the way Lily Wong went about getting her point across. She explained her strange process of eating dumplings to make a point about what food means to her in Chinese-American culture. Her point was that you don't have to try and "act" like a certain person to be a certain ethnicity. For example, eating dumplings with ketchup like an "American" shouldn't make Lily Wong any less Chinese. I also really enjoyed Wong's rhetoric and how the piece was written. The tone of the first half of the piece was very humorous and the second part was a bit humorous, but she got a good point across at the same time.

"Reclaiming True Grits" had a purpose very similar to that of the first piece, but a bit different. While "Reclaiming True Grits" was also about the food of a certain culture, it dealt more with the cultural issues and stigmas surrounding the food. In this piece, Bryant Terry talked a lot about the how people perceive soul food as being unhealthy, when the only unhealthy soul food is instant soul food. Bryant Terry also talked about how unhealthy eating habits have been romanticized and normalized in cultures. I totally agree with this. Even though these days everybody is obsessed with being skinny and fit, the way most of the world views food is distorted. For example, look at the size of the average plate. These days, it's normal for people to eat way more food than they need to.

The writing style of "Reclaiming True Grits" was similar to that of "Eating the Hyphen", but it was much more serious. Bryant Terry also included a recipe for a traditional dish of his culture but unlike Wong, he uses history to support his argument.