We are what we eat : ethnic food and the making of Americans / Donna R. Gabaccia ; [illustrations by Susan Keller].

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gabaccia, Donna R., 1949-

Contributor:

JSTOR (Organization)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Food habits--United States.

Food habits.

Ethnic food industry--United States.

Ethnic food industry.

Ethnic attitudes--United States.

Ethnic attitudes.

United States--Social life and customs.

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (278 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1998.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Ghulam Bombaywala sells bagels in Houston. Demetrios dishes up pizza in Connecticut. The Wangs serve tacos in Los Angeles. How ethnicity has influenced American eating habits—and thus, the make-up and direction of the American cultural mainstream—is the story told in We Are What We Eat. It is a complex tale of ethnic mingling and borrowing, of entrepreneurship and connoisseurship, of food as a social and political symbol and weapon—and a thoroughly entertaining history of our culinary tradition of multiculturalism. The story of successive generations of Americans experimenting with their new neighbors’ foods highlights the marketplace as an important arena for defining and expressing ethnic identities and relationships. We Are What We Eat follows the fortunes of dozens of enterprising immigrant cooks and grocers, street hawkers and restaurateurs who have cultivated and changed the tastes of native-born Americans from the seventeenth century to the present. It also tells of the mass corporate production of foods like spaghetti, bagels, corn chips, and salsa, obliterating their ethnic identities. The book draws a surprisingly peaceful picture of American ethnic relations, in which “Americanized” foods like Spaghetti-Os happily coexist with painstakingly pure ethnic dishes and creative hybrids. Donna Gabaccia invites us to consider: If we are what we eat, who are we? Americans’ multi-ethnic eating is a constant reminder of how widespread, and mutually enjoyable, ethnic interaction has sometimes been in the United States. Amid our wrangling over immigration and tribal differences, it reveals that on a basic level, in the way we sustain life and seek pleasure, we are all multicultural.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction: What Do We Eat?

1. Colonial Creoles

2. Immigration, Isolation, and Industry

3. Ethnic Entrepreneurs

4. Crossing the Boundaries of Taste

5. Food Fights and American Values

6. The Big Business of Eating

7. Of Cookbooks and Culinary Roots

8. Nouvelle Creole

Conclusion: Who Are We?

Sources

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [243]-267) and index.

ISBN:

9780674037441

0674037448

OCLC:

923110349