Prison Food and Culture Class

Katie D.

March 5, 2011 - 8:18 PM

One of my favorite classes this term is "Cross-Cultural Dynamics in Conflict Resolution." Our Professor, Barbara Tint, is extremely dynamic, and creates a large degree of openness in the classroom, allowing the students to be a driving force in our own educations.

That's the mark of a good teacher: helping the students bring forth what they already know.

In that vein, we have spent a good amount of time exploring our own cultures as we discuss working and conversing with individuals from other cultural backgrounds. I have come to recognize more of my culture each week: I am not only an American, but a woman, a young person, a student, a member of the middle class, an academic, an activist, and an admirer of Latin American culture. These are all parts of my identity, and they overlap and intersect in interesting ways. And each piece of my identity contains significant implications for my cultural identities: both those in which I grew up and those which I have adopted in recent years.

One of the things I have learned this term is to make the strange become familiar, and to examine the familiar until it becomes strange.

In pursuit of cultural sharing and personal involvement, we have been sharing food this term. Each of us has brought a food from our cultures to share with the class during our four-hour Friday classes. We've eaten Polish food, American junk food, celebration funfetti cake, traditional potluck fare, and a whole array of the comfort food my peers grew up with.

I had a difficult time with this assigment. I'm not much of a cook, particularly for large numbers. I make mean pancakes, but those wouldn't survive the trip to school or the wait. I could have made the brownie-ice cream-candy-and whipped cream dessert my mom used to make for birthdays, but I literally have no freezer space at the moment (one of the burdens of living with three roommates). So I decided to bring a food from a culture I've spent time in since leaving home, and one that influences my life and studies currently.

The choice was between a Latin American dish or prison food. I went with prison.

I brought chi-chis for the class. After extensive web research, it seems that variations of this exist in every American prison: it is one of the few foods it is possible to make with food available from the stores in prison, and with the limited cooking supplies allowed on cell blocks.

Chi-chis is a ramen-based dish, with various ingredients added for flavor. I've seen ingredients as diverse as Slim Jims and Doritos. I adapted a recipe I first experienced at Graterford Prison in Pennsylvania, and fed it to my class. It involved chicken Ramen noodles, cheddar cheese, jalapenos, frozen mixed vegetables (to simulate the dried veggies in a Cup O' Soup), and tuna. My roommates talked me out of serving my class the way I first experienced this dish: scooped out of a black garbage bag with a plastic cup. I suppose that might have been a little much for some of my peers.

So that's that! Ramen tuna casserole, prison style. Is it strange that I claimed prison food as my cultural contribution to the class? Perhaps a little. But being a member of a prison education program has had an enormous impact on how I understand myself and my work, and how I see the world. When a good number of your students and co-workers do not have the freedom to choose their own diets, it makes you appreciate your every meal in a slightly different way. Likewise to the freedom of seeing a horizon without walls, or the ability to choose the color of my shirt each morning.

Beyond the theoretical cultural implications of my work inside prisons, I will also say that chi-chis, while lacking much nutritional value, are actually delicious. My dish was extremely popular with the class, and I got a dramatic reaction when unveiling my contribution.

So, prison food. It's what's for dinner.