Heritage Begins at Home
I am not a good cook. I have never made any dish that represented Ethiopian culture, and we've only taken Davis to an Ethiopian restaurant outside of Addis Ababa once. (It was a great place in Atlanta called Queen of Sheba. Davis' favorite part of the meal was the lettuce.) We've had Chinese food only a handful of times more than that. Never something I prepared. Pearl is a "spicy girl" from Hunan who has rarely tasted the bright flavors that established the spicy food = spicy people equation.
But the kitchen isn't the only room in which you can expose your kids to the culture of the place they were born. We have done a much better job integrating elements of the kids' Chinese and Ethiopian heritage into our home decor. I plan to spend a few days in next week sharing a few photos of our home and the ways in which it reflects the places where we've lived.
There are many great reasons to give a view of the wide world through different types of windows in our home. Photographs of those in different lands, artwork and stories from other cultures, and maps all help us to appreciate the diversity of the earth and, hopefully, to be less self-important.
My sister is writing through her 31 days by sharing ways in which we can decorate our homes with map art. Her blog is called Map of Home, and she has some really great ideas there of maps that are beautiful, share stories, or simply illustrate the boundaries of nations. One of my favorite maps there is this one, a map which shows the path taken by my sister's in-laws, who immigrated to America from the Philippines. I think we may need some kind of Family History Map like this for our home, so the place where we live can better reflect our heritage.
No comments:
Post a Comment