My students inspire me (and challenge me) on a daily basis.  This semester, while grading assignments about the post-Revolution and Market Revolution, one of my students pulled an unusual quote from Hector St. John de Crevecoeur's Letters From An American Farmer.  I have written about Crevecoeur before and his description of what defines an American in early 19th-century society.  Crevecoeur describes a young American culture, defining itself after the American Revolution.  Crevecoeur, a French immigrant, writes his definition of an American:

He is an American, who leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world. – What is an American? J. Hector St. John Crevecoeur  (1782)

So, let's start with a basic observation....his pronouns reflect gendered patriarchy that identified citizenship with the male, white American.  Ok.  We certainly won't forgive Crevecoeur for this oversight, but if we focus on his exclusion of women in the American experiment, we miss the analysis of the historical perspective he provides us elsewhere.  If we cancel Crevecoeur right out of the gate because he excludes women, we don't learn from the history he provides.  So we read closer...which is what my student did.  

Crevecoeur starts out this famous paragraph with a less cited phrase.  Before he writes that Americans are "melted into a new race of men,"  he says:

What attachment can a poor European emigrant have for a country where he had nothing? The knowledge of the language, the love of a few kindred as poor as himself, were the only cords that tied him: his country is now that which gives him land, bread, protection, and consequence: Ubi panis ibi patria, is the motto of all emigrants. 

Let's again, as with gender, set aside Crevecoeur's eurocentric perspective for a moment.  Suffice it to say, Crevecoeur was European, hence his focused writing.  Ubi panis ibi patria means 'where there is bread, there is my country.'  I'm so intrigued by this close read of Crevecoeur.  I spend a good deal of time thinking about the first part of Crevecoceur's writing.  The American melting pot of immigrants was a 20th-century narrative that tried to uplift our differences as Americans by explaining our unique contributions to an American recipe for success.  The quote usually stirs up the question of whether we think a melting pot is an adequate representation of the American psyche and immigrant experience. I tell my students with a smile that 10 years ago, I was (and I was) instructed to stop referring to America as a melting pot and alternatively should call it a salad bowl. With the salad bowl metaphor, the ingredients retain their own individual shape and characteristics, yet still, make a yummy salad. (About 5 years ago in grad school, I was told that the salad bowl metaphor was under erasure and I should instead use trail mix, but I draw the line there.) I don't especially like trail mix.  Rather than focus on salad or stew, my student highlighted bread.  

Ubi panis ibi patria, where there is bread, there is my country.  Perhaps, the American immigrant experience is about survival and opportunity.  Perhaps, rather than argue over stews that melt away diversity or salads that celebrate diversity, we should focus on breaking bread together.  You can have your salad, I can have my stew, but our history, our shared history, is the bread of American life.  Where there is bread, there is my country.  Amen.