I really enjoyed Saturday’s delicious spread and sharing our food stories. It reminded of our readings for Goldbard’s book, The Art of Cultural Development. In chapter 4, there is a story circle potluck that evolves into the Breaking Bread Project. The group decides to make a cookbook and that spills over into working with local businesses and a larger portion of community. The deep connections that bonds us in sharing foods and cooking has helped me work through some cultural barriers. When I lived in California, I would make jam with friends and neighbors in the summer. I met family from India and they had an apricot tree. They called me and asked if I could come over and teach them to make jam. During the process we shared other recipes and “grandma” showed me a variation on cooking mung beans. She doesn’t speak any English. I was excited to learn from her because she loved to cook for the family. When the jam was done, I got nervous that she wouldn’t like it. Later, I learned that she loved it and ate it all the time. I was invited over many more times to exchange in cooking. Even though grandma and I had a language barrier, we communicated side by side in the kitchen.

I have been learning a lot about community cultural development recently from Winter and Spring term this year. It guided me in adding a minor in Disability Studies to my undergraduate degree. This term, I am taking a class called Living Theater. It is made up of community members with disabilities, volunteers who have experience in theatre, and university students. We are collaborating our ideas and stories that will turn into a performance for our final project. In our readings from Arlene Goldbard in chapter 5, she shares about Boal’s approaches using theatre to create dialogue with people from the community and providing a public place to express their issues and concerns. I really connected to this part in the book because I see similar connections in my theatre class.

Bronwyn Buffalino