Let me start off by saying I am not an academic specializing in the field of Queer Studies nor am I an expert in the field of pickling. What I am is a forty-something Iranian-American queer designer, cook and storyteller who has been organizing fashion, culinary and performance events centering the distinctly “American Immigrant” queer/trans SWANA + POC experience since the late 90’s.
In the recent months, as the pandemic settled in and social distancing became the new normal, I, like many others, have tried my hand at pickling. Pickling seems like such a practical and necessary activity to partake in during a time when food insecurity, unemployment, mass protests around racial injustice and an uncertain future have taken center stage.
There is something so grounding and comforting in knowing that you can take a variety of nourishing vegetables/fruits/whatever and preserve them in a simple mixture of vinegar/water/spices to enjoy now as well as in the unknown future. It feels empowering and environmentally-minded to know that you can take produce that might be going bad and transform it into something delicious and waste-free.
What I didn’t expect was to begin viewing pickling as a symbol of QTBIPOC resilience.
Before I dive into my completely unscientific and unproven point of view around how pickling is QUEER AF, I will share with you a little insight into my early experiences with using the term “pickled”as a teenager growing up in an Iranian immigrant community in the late 80’s.
Fast-forward a few decades, a few major social/cultural/technological movements later and here we are in 2020. It is PRIDE month and “PRIDE” exists today because of riots & protests held by fierce and fearless American Black and other POC trans/queer folx who risked everything to stand up for the rights of the LGBTQ communties. Today we are in the midst of a country-wide and world-wide series of mass protests centered around Black Lives Matter, racial justice and the defunding of the barbaric and archaic police organizations in the US. We are still in the thick of the pandemic and it is unclear what the best protocol is to stay safe and stop the spread of the virus while also cautiously re-opening businesses and public spaces.
As shit continues to hit the fan, I find myself making more and more jars of pickles and reflecting. Spending time meditatively cutting an array of colorful ingredients, playfully arranging them in random glass jars, experimenting with different spices and vinegars to see what color and flavor the brine will become—these have become comforting activities for me during a time of great uncertainty as well as a time of collective growth in consciousness as a nation.
As part of my self-reflection during this pickle making, I started to see a poetic connection between the complex layers of being a person of the QTBIPOC experience and the act of pickling. I thought of how diverse and varied the shapes, colors, textures, and flavors are of pickled foods.
I thought of how transformative the pickling act is and how, depending on the the spices and brine used, the individual ingredients are reborn as a medley of delicious and layered flavors and colors. Let’s go beyond sour; let’s talk about tangy, spicy, sweet, bitter, aromatic, tart, bold, savory.
I thought of the sturdy cauliflower, the thirst-trappin’ eggplant, the high-femme watermelon radish, and the sexy hook-up of a beet and some turnips that magically turns them all a very gay fuschia pink color during the pickling process.
I thought of how the environment, in this case the brine, can directly effect how that jar full of ingredients starts to look and taste. Put too much sourness or bitterness into the jar and all the pickled pieces will start to take on that bitter and sour flavor. Add a drizzle of honey and some smoked paprika to the brine and that jar will have a subtly sweet and sultry vibe to it. The collective whole transforms and is effected by the balanced nature of its environment, in this case the brine.
Resilience. What does pickling have to do with QTBIPOC resilience? This theme came to me one day as I was digging around in my fridge to find produce that had started “going bad” or was “imperfect” in appearance. Imperfect ingredients with some bruises that were not “Instagrammable” in that flawless, white-washed way. I’d prefer to think of the aging produce as “seasoned”; the “imperfect” produce as perfectly unique in their beauty.
Instead of discarding these aging and imperfect produce, I saw the potential for what they could become if collectively they were given an optimal environment to transform into the most vibrant and delicious versions of themselves. I saw how coming together, these individual ingredients not only got more enhanced in their magnificence, but also now were going to last much longer, together in their communal brine.
Pickling these non-normative vegetables made me grin and think to myself of the expansive network of friends in my queer/trans community who each have shown endless strength, resourcefulness and vision in their own transformation and growth. It made me think of how many of my Black friends, SWANA friends, Indigenous friends, Asian friends, South-Asian friends, Latinx friends, and mixed race friends have forged ahead and created their own special “brines” and have been pickling up a storm with the community-building events, art, music and food they have been creating.
The act of pickling is an act of preservation, transformation and the enhancement of the collective pieces that come together as a whole in the same environment. I see more transformative and delicious new brine recipes coming out of our current circumstances. I see a whole new wave of pickling happening as we continue to show our resilience and resourcefulness.
