Hungering for America : Italian, Irish, and Jewish foodways in the age of migration / Hasia R. Diner.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Diner, Hasia R.

Contributor:

Chef Fritz Blank Culinary Archive and Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Italians--Food--United States.

Italians.

Irish--Food--United States.

Irish.

Jews--Food--United States.

Jews.

Immigrants--United States.

Immigrants.

Famines.

Food habits.

Jews--Food.

Food.

United States.

Food habits--United States.

Food habits--Europe.

Famines--Europe.

Europe.

Penn Provenance:

Blank, Fritz (bookplate) (donor) (Blank Collection copy)

Physical Description:

xvii, 292 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2001.

Summary:

Hungering for America gives us a unique perspective on the experience of immigration. It tells the stories of three distinctive groups of immigrants, in their old worlds and in the new, through food. Once in America, Italian immigrants transformed the food of their upper classes and of sacred days into a generic "Italian" food that inspired community pride and cohesion. Irish immigrants, in contrast, loath to mimic the foodways of the Protestant British elite, diminished food as a marker of ethnicity. And East European Jews, who venerated food as the vital center around which family and religious practice gathered, found that dietary restrictions jarred with America's boundless choices. These tales demonstrate the role of hunger in driving migration and the significance of food in cementing ethnic identity and community.

Contents:

1. Ways of Eating, Ways of Starving 1

2. Black Bread, Hard Bread: Food, Class, and Hunger in Italy 21

3. "The Bread Is Soft": Italian Foodways, American Abundance 48

4. "Outcast from Life's Feast": Food and Hunger in Ireland 84

5. The Sounds of Silence: Irish Food in America 113

6. A Set Table: Jewish Food and Class in Eastern Europe 146

7. Food Fights: Immigrant Jews and the Lure of America 178

8. Where There Is Bread, There Is My Country 220.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [233]-283) and index.

Local Notes:

Blank Collection copy has dust-jacket retained.

Blank Collection copy has bookplate of Chef Fritz Blank.

ISBN:

0674006054

OCLC:

47136633