When 11-year old Shayna Mehta (9) sat down in her middle school cafeteria and opened her lunch of daal rice, a traditional Indian dish, she noticed people looking at her a little differently. Followed by the stares were seemingly harmless comments such as ‘Do you eat that a lot?’ or ‘That smells.’ In that moment, Mehta said, she felt as if she was the odd one out.

At the time, the negative comments left Mehta feeling like a fish out of water, ashamed and uncomfortable, feeling the need to be like everyone else, to eat the same food as her peers.

 “To me, it felt harder to fit in, and the need to feel like I belonged strengthened,” Mehta said. “Growing up, my family’s culture and tradition were always different, and food was just another part of that. It’s always been a challenge to fit in, and bringing ethnic food that was so different from the norm just felt like another thing that made me stand out.”

In middle school, after that experience, Mehta avoided bringing Indian food to school, worried about the reactions of her peers. She remembers being apprehensive about bringing traditional food and telling her mom she didn’t want to bring that to school because “no one else does and it’s weird.”

 “A majority of the time, I brought western food to school, which is why I think the times I brought ‘home,’ or traditional food, I felt even more offbeat from everyone else,” she said. “My family definitely didn’t understand why the type of food I brought to school mattered, but they did let me stop bringing Indian food to school if I didn’t want to.”

As Mehta has grown, so has her perspective on bringing her own food to school and expressing her culture. Over time Mehta learned to not let any negative comments or reactions get to her.

“As the whole diversity narrative has spread throughout our generation, I don’t feel inferior or less than if I do bring my own food to school now,” Mehta said “I think it just makes me feel more secure in who I am now, as compared to a couple of years ago.” 

Still, Mehta said she feels more comfortable eating her cultural food around people with whom she can relate. 

“I think when I started seeing my other friends bring their own cultural food, it was like a green light for me,” she said. “I wasn’t the only one bringing non-Western food, and at the end of the day, it wasn’t a big deal. We all had diverse and interesting food at lunch and honestly it was amazing to see. It’s kinda how it works with a lot of aspects of life. Just knowing that we’re all kind of in the same boat is comforting, whereas if I were to take out some Indian food around friends who aren’t used to that, I’d kind of feel like the outcast.”

When she was a young student herself, science teacher My-Nga Ingram struggled with the judgment she faced for bringing food from home. 

“I think when I was little, my first feeling was shame,” she said. “Like, this is not normal. Because people responded in a very visceral way–and it wasn’t a positive response–first it was shame and then it was embarrassment, like, ‘oh, I should know better.’ I was like, 6, 7, but I felt like, ‘oh I should I should know not to bring this and not to bring this kind of food from now on.’”

Similarly, as a young teacher at Westview, Ingram said she often felt insecure about eating traditional Vietnamese food around her co-workers. 

“I would force myself to eat things that didn’t smell, like sandwiches or something mild,” she said. “I couldn’t even bring Vietnamese sandwiches, which is what I grew up eating. I didn’t grow up eating American-style sandwiches, so I had to, in many ways, force myself to so that I could fit in.” 

As a teacher now, Ingram said she tries to create an atmosphere where her students won’t feel the same way she felt growing up, by allowing them to open up about their cultures and the foods they eat.

“I really enjoy it when you can express yourself in any way you want, whether it be the way you wear your clothes, the name that you like being called, or the food you eat because it’s such an important part of all cultures,” Ingram said.

Pre-pandemic, Ingram experienced many instances where a student would share their culture and offer her some of their food. Ingram’s father, who immigrated to the United States in his 30s because of the Vietnam War, was always willing to share food and supplies with the other refugees despite not having much himself. Ingram grew up having hot pot parties hosted by her dad because that was his way of sharing his culture and being social with his co-workers and customers. After he passed away, Ingram wanted to honor him by hosting hot pot parties in her classroom to share her culture with her peers and students.

 “I invite the staff, I invite the students to learn about this very social aspect of all cultures, not just the Vietnamese culture, but all cultures coming together and realizing we have a lot more in common than we do differences,” Ingram said.

Back in 2019, Darren Zhou (12) attended one of Ingram’s hot pot sharings. Having experienced negative reactions from his peers for bringing traditional food to school in the past, Zhou was surprised that Ingram was willing to set up this event for everyone when she first mentioned it to his class. According to Zhou, he enjoyed the hot pot sharing as he was able to meet new people and share his hot pot experience with everyone.

“[Ingram] put us into completely different groups and because of that I wasn’t with any friends so I had to just talk to a bunch of new people,” he said. “I was at a table with a couple of teachers as well so we all got to talk about hot pot stuff like ‘Oh what do you normally put in the hot pot?’ or ‘What do you normally do during Lunar New Year?’ and it was kind of a cultural exchange at that point because there are people from all these different cultures all coming together over Ingram’s hot pot.” 

Zhou said that the classroom that day felt homier and that everyone felt a lot more comfortable with each other. Additionally, he said that a teacher who hadn’t been introduced to Asian culture before was constantly asking him questions and that he felt happy to share.

“It was an interesting experience, like having someone that didn’t know that much about this culture and then sharing my experiences with them over some hot pot,” he said.

Zhou said that the hot pot sharing made him feel more comfortable opening up about his culture.

“Hot pot has such unique preparation and it’s a bit different than other foods,” he said. “I think that it definitely helped a lot of other people get over their fear or nervousness about their culture and foods. It definitely made me proud that I could say I eat hot pot and this kind of food all the time.”

Knowing how it feels to be ostracized for her food, Mehta is inclusive with other people to make it more comfortable for them to eat their own food and express their own culture. 

“I avoid long stares or saying things like ‘something smells weird’ out loud to the whole group,” Mehta said. “Statements like that can make someone feel weird or like their food is ‘wrong’ to bring to school. And if it does seem new to me and I’m interested, I’ll genuinely ask them what the food is and where it comes from.”