A New American Dream
Story by Anna Esquivel
Photos by Hannah M. Gore
The American Dream is a national narrative that has been retold and repurposed for more than 100 years, often as a way of keeping hope in a difficult world. The original narrative promised prosperity, liberty, and civic agency — the very ideals enshrined in our founding documents — for everyone, equally. Over the years, the American Dream has come to be synonymous with a striving for individual wealth and the promise of upward mobility. What freedom and civic engagement have to do with prosperity often gets forgotten. Sometimes, though, it happens that you hear an old story again, this time from a different storyteller.
Held in Jackson since 2014, the Jackson International Food and Art Festival is weaving its own version of the story. When the festival organizers met recently to plan for our 10-year anniversary celebration, we talked about our dreams for the next 10 years of the festival. All of our answers shared common, and familiar, themes: that freedom is interdependent, that what makes us different can help us prosper, and that community resources should be available to all of us who call Jackson home.
The reality of being “The Hub City” is that sometimes people who stop over stay over. After a while, their dreams, ideas, and values become woven into the fabric of the region. Their differences are included.
When he was still new to Jackson, Eduardo Morales had trouble finding community and accessing services that he needed to make the transition from California (and before that, his home town of El Bañadero, Jalisco, Mexico) a successful one. He reached out to the mayor’s office for help. Not long after that connection was made, the city reached back out to him in the hopes that he could help with a new cultural exchange initiative, a way for the international community to share their cultures. With the help of co-chair Dr. Sandra Dee, who had already been working with the West Tennessee Fil-Am Association to share the rich Filipino culture that flourished in the city, they had an idea for a festival that would showcase the diversity of cultures in West Tennessee, and to provide for others what Morales had to find on his own: a way for new West Tennesseans to connect to city services and local resources that might not seem easily accessible to them.
The core group of festival planners is a microcosm of the cultural diversity that the festival highlights. We are life-long Jacksonians, life-long Southerners new to West Tennessee, Californians, Northerners, and foreign-born citizens who call West Tennessee home. Artist Wanda Stanfill cultivated her artistic passions and soothing Southern drawl right here in Jackson, where she has lived her whole life. Her early experiences with teachers who challenged her to think of herself as a global citizen continue to inspire her art and her public service work. Recognizable from her work with United Way, Pat Ross has worked in a number of industries around Jackson, having been brought up here. Each job she has held has the common thread of connecting people with other people and resources, which she believes is fundamental to individual and communal prosperity.
Vinay Sood, born in Missouri to Indian parents, has never met a stranger. His success as a salesman can be attributed to his sincere interest and investment in every person he meets. Mississippi-born Jean Marie Walls is the epitome of the global citizen. Having lived and traveled abroad, she found a home in West Tennessee, teaching French and intercultural communication to university students. Ronnie Goff, a self-proclaimed “Navy Brat,” has lived in more countries than most people can name. She found a home, and her Jackson-born husband, in West Tennessee, where her roots are growing deep.
And then there’s me, with a half-Mexican father from California and a small-town Arkansan mother. My interest in migration patterns of people and culture was sparked by childhood trips out west, hearing vagabond uncles and a world-traveling father tell stories that captured my imagination. The JIFAF Executive Committee is a small group, united by our differences, led by two long-time, foreign-born Jacksonians on a mission to provide for the community a new version of prosperity and civic engagement.
The committee’s dream for the festival had always been to grow bigger each year. During my first planning meeting four years ago, the question of whether we were outgrowing the downtown location was raised. By then, attendance had already quadrupled since that inaugural festival in 2014. Now, more vendors were interested in having booths, more cultures and organizations wanted to participate, and more performers were asking about stage time. It was made clear in that meeting that downtown Jackson for the site of the festival was non-negotiable. To Morales and Dee, the symbolism of posting the flags of each represented nation in front of city hall was essential to our mission. The festival was a way for both native West Tennesseans and their international neighbors to connect with city and county services, and for them to know that those services were available to everyone, equally.
It had become a familiar scene: across from city hall where, on the main festival stage, the city and county mayors made proclamations about cultural solidarity, local artists and college students helped children with globally-themed art projects. Nearby, members of the fire department watched children play while their older siblings pawed shyly at brochures being distributed by Army recruiters. County and city police educated festival goers about ways to keep their communities safe, and local churches touted their pro-bono services for new immigrants. Very rarely have I participated in an event in which each small, meaningful interaction was a visual manifestation of its vision. When the festival was forced to move to the Jackson Fairgrounds, we grieved with the community.
We couldn’t have been more proud of our growth. The festival helped us to realize a dream of increased diversity and access to services and resources for even more of our citizens. Nevertheless, we were deeply anxious about what might be lost in the move from downtown to the Jackson Fairgrounds. Would those connections to city services be made as clear to the city’s residents? Would we lose the unity and collaboration that was fostered by the intimacy of the downtown location? Would people even come? Walking through the fairgrounds arena ahead of the festival, we could still see remnants of the county fair that had preceded us. The pavilion on the north end of the arena still had straw that had softened the ground for livestock. I wondered how we would reconcile in the minds of attendees the nostalgic Americana vibes of the West Tennessee State Fair with the Parade of Cultures that would march across those same grounds the following weekend.
When festival day arrived and with the fresh perspective of a new location, I saw something taking shape that both honored the old vision of the festival and presented a new version of the festival planners’ dream in ways that I had not anticipated. That day, more than twenty thousand West Tennesseans had an opportunity to connect with their neighbors, area resources, and homegrown goods and services. Artists’ Row greeted festival goers as soon as they came in the exhibit hall doors. On one side of the room, one stunning painting by local artist Rose Newhouse stood out to me: a half-length portrait of a woman on black canvas drenched in orange, turquoise, gold, and red. Her long locs in the same splashes of color flowed behind her long silver earrings and a heavy gold necklace. In a booth directly behind her sat a near-life-sized bust of a woman, also adorned with long thick locs, expertly sculpted by Ghanaian artist Kumi Samuel. Around the corner, another local artist, Frank Jones, displayed his wooden art pieces adorned with American flags, Veteran symbols, cowboys, and idyllic southern landscapes. Outside of the exhibit hall where a world’s worth of food drew hungry crowds, an immigrant family cooked traditional Turkish food, and across the way a local food truck served the American standards: hot dogs and key lime pie. At the other end of the festival, you could see a demonstration by local woodturners while you were waiting for your turn to get a Henna tattoo.
A walk through the fairgrounds showed me that while the diversity and differences among us were on full, glorious display, so was a new American Dream that promised that hard work would be rewarded, opportunity would be provided to those who would take it, and prosperity would follow both for the individual and the community they served. Each vendor at the festival, whether locally raised or newly located, shared with festival participants the product of their own imagination and labor. Here was the epiphany: the exchange of cultures was bidirectional. Curious West Tennesseans learned as much about Bollywood as enterprising Trinidadians learned about locally-dyed macramé yarn.
I used to think, as my friend (and brilliant author of the photos you see here) Hannah Gore explained, “If I wanted to experience culture, I had to go somewhere else.” The Jackson International Food and Art Festival showed me that I could find the world on display right here in Jackson. When culture is created and consumed by the very folks who live together, who share their lives with each other every day, whose politics and livelihoods are interconnected, we author the sincerest and purest version of the American Dream.