Eating Asian America
A Food Studies Reader
Published on 23. September 2013
Book
Paperback/Softback
453 pages
978-1-4798-6925-1 (ISBN)
Description
Examines the ways our conceptions of Asian American food have been shaped
Chop suey. Sushi. Curry. Adobo. Kimchi. The deep associations Asians in the United States have with food have become ingrained in the American popular imagination. So much so that contentious notions of ethnic authenticity and authority are marked by and argued around images and ideas of food.
Eating Asian America: A Food Studies Reader collects burgeoning new scholarship in Asian American Studies that centers the study of foodways and culinary practices in our understanding of the racialized underpinnings of Asian Americanness. It does so by bringing together twenty scholars from across the disciplinary spectrum to inaugurate a new turn in food studies: the refusal to yield to a superficial multiculturalism that naively celebrates difference and reconciliation through the pleasures of food and eating. By focusing on multi-sited struggles across various spaces and times, the contributors to this anthology bring into focus the potent forces of class, racial, ethnic, sexual and gender inequalities that pervade and persist in the production of Asian American culinary and alimentary practices, ideas, and images.
This is the first collection to consider the fraught itineraries of Asian American immigrant histories and how they are inscribed in the production and dissemination of ideas about Asian American foodways.
Chop suey. Sushi. Curry. Adobo. Kimchi. The deep associations Asians in the United States have with food have become ingrained in the American popular imagination. So much so that contentious notions of ethnic authenticity and authority are marked by and argued around images and ideas of food.
Eating Asian America: A Food Studies Reader collects burgeoning new scholarship in Asian American Studies that centers the study of foodways and culinary practices in our understanding of the racialized underpinnings of Asian Americanness. It does so by bringing together twenty scholars from across the disciplinary spectrum to inaugurate a new turn in food studies: the refusal to yield to a superficial multiculturalism that naively celebrates difference and reconciliation through the pleasures of food and eating. By focusing on multi-sited struggles across various spaces and times, the contributors to this anthology bring into focus the potent forces of class, racial, ethnic, sexual and gender inequalities that pervade and persist in the production of Asian American culinary and alimentary practices, ideas, and images.
This is the first collection to consider the fraught itineraries of Asian American immigrant histories and how they are inscribed in the production and dissemination of ideas about Asian American foodways.
Reviews / Votes
Featuring 20 essays, this volume connects Asian food to larger social, economic, political, and historical contexts in the US....The essays in this volume not only constitute the first academic book on the topic with such comprehensiveness, but also investigate the social hierarchy that exists around race, gender, sex, class, and ethnicity. - Y. Kiuchi (CHOICE) Full of provocation and insight, this collection productively investigates the complicated and often racialized relationships between consumer, producer, and nation. Foundational in its interdisciplinary, transnational critique of cuisine-driven multiculturalism, Eating Asian Americaskillfully navigates the vexed terrain of food politics. - Cathy J. Schlund-Vials,author of War, Genocide, and Justice: Cambodian American Memory Work The essays themselves are readable and concise. Each scholar... [is] successful in reaching a very large audience, from Asian American scholars to those simply interested in food histories and identities. - Christopher Patterson (The International Examiner) [Manalansan] coedits the interdisciplinary collection of essays exploring the ways in which eating and culinary practices reflect and reinforce class, racial, and gender inequalities among Asian-American immigrants. (Rochester Review) Eating Asian Americadoes an excellent job of introducing the Asian/Asian American perspective to the discipline of food studies. This book is a highly useful, and much needed addition to food studies. It is a significant addition to the growing conversation about American foodways; as such, it is important that this booknot be considered to explore a niche topic. (Graduate Journal of Food Studies) Thisbook transforms the study of Asian American food from an idiosyncratic, crowd-pleasing set of narratives that map discrete social histories into a key subfield for the discipline. (American Quarterly)More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 254 mm
Width: 178 mm
Thickness: 30 mm
Weight
953 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4798-6925-1 (9781479869251)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
09/2013
1st Edition
New York University Press
€142.99
Available for download
E-Book
09/2013
New York University Press
€30.99
Available for download
Persons
Robert Ji-Song Ku (Editor)
Robert Ji-Song Ku is Associate Professor of Asian and Asian American Studies at Binghamton University and the Managing Editor of Foundations and Futures: Asian American and Pacific Islander Multimedia Textbook of the Asian American Studies Center at UCLA. He is the author of Dubious Gastronomy: The Cultural Politics of Eating Asian in the USA.
Martin F. Manalansan (Editor)
Martin F. Manalansan IV is Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. He has taught at the University of Minnesota, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, New York University, New School University, and the University of the Philippines. He is the author of Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Duke UP:2003). His forthcoming book is entitled "Queer Dwellings: Mess, Mesh, Measure." He is the president of the Association for Asian American Studies.
Anita Mannur (Editor)
Anita Mannur is Director of the Asia, Pacific, and Diaspora Studies Program and Professor of Critical Race, Gender and Culture Studies at American University. She is the author of Intimate Eating: Racialized Spaces and Radical Futures and Culinary Fictions: Food in South Asian Diasporic Cultures. She is the 2019 recipient of the Excellence in Mentoring Award from the Association for Asian American Studies.
Robert Ji-Song Ku is Associate Professor of Asian and Asian American Studies at Binghamton University and the Managing Editor of Foundations and Futures: Asian American and Pacific Islander Multimedia Textbook of the Asian American Studies Center at UCLA. He is the author of Dubious Gastronomy: The Cultural Politics of Eating Asian in the USA.
Martin F. Manalansan (Editor)
Martin F. Manalansan IV is Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. He has taught at the University of Minnesota, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, New York University, New School University, and the University of the Philippines. He is the author of Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (Duke UP:2003). His forthcoming book is entitled "Queer Dwellings: Mess, Mesh, Measure." He is the president of the Association for Asian American Studies.
Anita Mannur (Editor)
Anita Mannur is Director of the Asia, Pacific, and Diaspora Studies Program and Professor of Critical Race, Gender and Culture Studies at American University. She is the author of Intimate Eating: Racialized Spaces and Radical Futures and Culinary Fictions: Food in South Asian Diasporic Cultures. She is the 2019 recipient of the Excellence in Mentoring Award from the Association for Asian American Studies.
Content
List of Figures and Maps Acknowledgments An Alimentary Introduction Part I 1. Cambodian Donut Shops and the Negotiation of Identity in Los Angeles 2. Tasting America 3. A Life Cooking for Others 4. Learning from Los Kogi Angeles 5. The Significance of Hawai'i Regional Cuisine in Postcolonial Hawai'i Part II 6. Incarceration, Cafeteria Style 7. As American as Jackrabbit Adobo 8. Lechon with Heinz, Lea & Perrins with Adobo 9. "Oriental Cookery" 10. Gannenshoyu or First-Year Soy Sauce? Kikkoman Soy Sauce and the Corporate Forgetting of the Early Japanese American ConsumerPart III 11. Twenty-First-Century Food Trucks 12. Samsa on Sheepshead Bay 13. Apple Pie and Makizushi 14. Giving Credit Where It Is Due 15. Beyond AuthenticityPart IV 16. Acting Asian American, Eating Asian American 17. Devouring Hawai'i 18. "Love Is Not a Bowl of Quinces" 19. The Globe at the Table 20. Perfection on a PlateBibliography ContributorsIndex