Pork

Last year, I shared a story about my Andalusian and Atlantic Creole ancestors. I explored these families in a longform piece, where I sketched out some of the lingering influences of having ancestors from these regions. Yet I neglected to mention one of the most important touchstones of any culture: food. This essay takes a quick glimpse at the foodways of my Southern ancestors who had distant ties to Andalusia.

The Granades, according to family lore, arrived in North Carolina after leaving the Palatinate, where they arrived after leaving Belgium. They’d arrived in Brussels after leaving southern Spain, where they arrived after leaving North Africa. They were always on the move.

There were a couple of sources where I found information about the various places they called home. The surname appears in the Dictionary of American Family Names, alongside a brief note about the family’s “Spanish Moorish” origins. Another source, published in the 1980s, cites information that an Alabamian Granade received in a letter from a Belgian Granade. That information suggests that our shared forebears were Moriscos who left Spain in the sixteenth century and converted to Catholicism. When they arrived in Belgium, they adopted a family crest festooned with pomegranates — reflecting the literal meaning of their surname.

My mom’s great-grandfather, the double great-grandson of a Granade woman, was a kind-hearted nonagenarian. He read the Bible cover-to-cover several times — although this was probably one of the only books the family could afford. He became a Biblical scholar of sorts. Self-taught, but respectable. He eventually became a Baptist deacon at some small church on a back-country lane. The one thing he took pride in was his commitment to a very particular dietary restriction.

In the rural South, where bacon, barbecue, hog jowls, and chitlins are staples, he wouldn’t let any pork past his lips. Not even a pork rind. Pork products were absolutely forbidden.

Years ago, my mother told one of her acquaintances about our grandfather’s self-imposed dietary restriction. This friend, a Jewish convert who’d spent time learning about conversos, mentioned the possibility that Grandpa Harve might’ve had Sephardic ancestry. In the years that followed that conversation, our family learned that Harve’s ancestors were, indeed, from Andalusia — but they were supposedly Muslims who converted to Catholicism and moved to the Low Countries.

Over the years, the family adopted new customs, new religions, and new languages. In spite of all the adaptations and conversions — sometimes coerced, sometimes voluntary — the family retained two distinct touchstones. The first was the Andalusian surname, infused with the essence of pomegranates. The second, of course, was our aversion to pigs.

Over the years between 2016 and 2024, I’ve experienced complicated feelings about my Spanish ancestors. These ancestors are distant, and I readily admit that. But I still recognize my Andalusian ancestors, because they contributed to my very existence. Beyond myself and my family, I find the region they lived in fascinating. Al-Andalus was not a gilded realm of perfection, but it was a place where scholars, artisans, and philosophers of various backgrounds came together in (relative) harmony. The pre-Reconquista era of Spanish history was fascinating.

Back in 2017 and 2018, I spent hours researching Spain. I read about the Lady of Elche and the Alhambra. I practiced Spanish — the peninsular dialect—and I tried to learn about Spanish cuisine, venturing beyond classics like paella and red wine. I learned about the origins of tapas, churros, and gazpacho. And, in addition to all of the good food, I explored the literature, the music, and the geopolitics of the Iberian region. I learned about Don Quijote, Sancho Panza, and Rocinante. I listened to flamenco music and learned a bit about the treatment of the Calé people. And I learned about the ETA, about Franco, about the niños perdidos in Catalonia.

I learned, too, about Spanish colonialism and imperialism. I read about the Spanish ducal family that descends from Moctezuma. I learned about Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines. By 2019, I had also learned that it could be awkward to claim Spanish ancestry, with the legacy of colonialism looming large in the background, the foreground, the world as it exists today.

Beyond feeling ashamed of the country’s imperial “projects,” I recognized that even within Spain, there are often complicated identities. There are plenty of Spaniards who don’t see themselves as only or primarily Spanish. There are Basques. There are Catalans. There are Calé. And over the years, I’ve struggled with finding the right word to describe my own ancestors: Spanish? Andalusian? Morisco or Mudejar? Andalusian Mudejar?

Ultimately, I’ve taken to calling these ancestors Andalusians, because it’s the term that best covers their geographic origins and the complexity of the world they lived in — of a world they eventually left behind, and of a world that changed with the passage of time.

Al-Andalus doesn’t exist anymore, but some traces of its existence have been preserved. History, and memories, have carried through to the present. The name is different, the place is different — but the memories (and the predilections) have lingered across the centuries.

Just like my mom’s great-grandfather, I do not eat bacon or pork barbecue. I’ve tried some, on occasion, so as not to hurt someone’s feelings if they’re just trying to share some food. But I never order pork for myself. I usually stick to barbecued chicken. Whenever I have the opportunity to have something else, like good barbecued mutton, I don’t want to waste it.

One summer day, when I was especially hungry for some smoked meat, I drove over to Owensboro — home of some of the best barbecue restaurants in the South. I stopped at Old Hickory, and I looked at the menu, even though I already knew exactly what I wanted to order.

I wasn’t there for chopped pork or ribs. I didn’t want any barbecued ham, either. I wanted to try some of their famous mutton.

The meat was flavorful and rich. It was delicious. The taste was familiar — and yet unlike anything I’d had before. I savored this familiarly unfamiliar meal. I knew I wasn’t missing out by forsaking the pork in favor of something different. I didn’t think about what I might be giving up. Instead, I thought about what I was gaining by going somewhere new and trying something else.

That’s what my ancestors did, when they abandoned Spain for the Low Countries, when they arrived in the Carolinas, and when they went farther inland to Tennessee and Kentucky. They made a new life in a different place, with unfamiliar surroundings and unfamiliar customs.

Whenever I try something new, I think, I’m a lot like them. Even hundreds of years later, I’m still like my folks.