Not long ago, I woke up one morning with a question I’d never asked myself before:

What would it mean to regard myself as a North American?

In Europe, people have layered identities. A French person might describe themselves as Breton, French, and European — all at once. A German might feel Fränkisch, Bavarian, and German, but also European. They move effortlessly between layers of local, regional, national, and continental belonging depending on the context.

But here in North America, it’s different. We do have layered identities to a degree, depending on one’s history. Certainly I regard myself as an American. In my case, I may associate myself with different locales depending on the situation. I feel comfortable saying I live in Atlanta (actually OTP), or in Georgia, but even though I’ve lived in the Southeast U.S. most of my adult life, I still hesitate to call myself a Southerner. I can certainly say as my birthright that I’m “from Jersey”, or even “North Jersey”, even though I haven’t lived there in twenty-five years, and my accent is no longer prominent. 

But never have I ever called myself North American.

That absence — that additional layer of identity — is what I suddenly noticed. And once I did, I couldn’t stop wondering about it.

I began to realize this idea isn’t just philosophical. I believe it matters for how we see ourselves, and how we resist the forces pulling our society apart. Here in the U.S.A, American exceptionalism, the rise of authoritarian politics, radical conservatism, even Christian nationalism — all thrive on a sharply defined sense of identity. 

What would a North American identity do to challenge those forces? It wouldn’t erase national pride or local traditions — no more than being “European” erases French or Italian culture. Would it give us a wider circle of belonging, to remind us that we share not just geography, but history, challenges, and futures?

For me, the hook came through an unexpected path: the growing collection of ingredients in my liquor cabinet.

• Mexico has agave spirits — tequila, mezcal, raicilla, sotol — rooted in Indigenous knowledge and centuries of cultural practice.
• The United States has bourbon and Tennessee whiskey, born of American and European grains, African ingenuity, and continuous experimentation.
• Canada has rye whisky, a blended spirit shaped by immigrants, northern climates, and a legacy of cross-border smuggling during Prohibition.
• The Caribbean has rum, distilled from sugarcane and inseparable from the brutal history of slavery and the triangle trade, but also from survival, rebellion, and cultural endurance.

Each glass carries a story: of migration, conquest, slavery, resilience, and exchange. And taken together, I realized my liquor cabinet was already continental, whether I recognized it or not.

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In the weeks ahead, my wife and I will be traveling to Montréal and later to Guadalajara. We’ll eat, drink, and explore like travelers do — but I’ll also be paying attention to the deeper layers. To the way a rye cocktail in a Montréal bar or a reposado in Jalisco connects me to a wider North American story.

As promised, this won’t become some grandiose manifesto. It will be a gradual journey, a series of reflections brought together by travel, history, books, and taste. A way of noticing the continental threads that already bind us together — in our kitchens, our music, our neighborhoods, our shared histories.

And maybe, just maybe, it’s a way forward. But the polarization machine is strong.

I’ll keep writing as the journey unfolds. Maybe you’ll want to come along.