Ebook We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans, by Donna R. Gabaccia
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We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans, by Donna R. Gabaccia
Ebook We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans, by Donna R. Gabaccia
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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.
- Sales Rank: #439434 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Harvard University Press
- Published on: 2000-04-17
- Released on: 2000-02-25
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x .72" w x 6.70" l, .80 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 288 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
Amazon.com Review
Donna R. Gabaccia, a professor of American history, explores how ethnicity has influenced the eating habits of Americans and determines that America is "not a multi-ethnic nation, but a nation of multi-ethnics." Can a country that eats bagel dogs and Thai chicken pizza still find ways to preserve the "original" foods of its immigrants? Is this even a worthwhile task, if the immigrants themselves are eager to assimilate into the larger culture, and the food industry is just as eager to co-opt (and, Gabaccia notes, water down) their native cuisine? Through case studies and anecdotal accounts, Gabaccia takes a look at the state of American cuisine and the curious culinary situation that allows SpaghettiOs to remain a venerable lunchtime standard at the same time that many restaurants strive to produce an "authentic" Milanese risotto.
From Library Journal
How did enclaves of immigrants obtain the foods to which they were accustomed in their new homes in America? How did pasta, tacos, and bagels move from ethnic fare to popular American foods? These are the types of questions Gabaccia (American history, Univ. of North Carolina at Charlotte) addresses in this well-researched and thoroughly documented volume. Through case studies and anecdotal records she traces the way immigrant groups, from Colonial times to the present, maintained their culinary identity in spite of efforts to Americanize them. Concurrently, entrepreneurs succeeded in mainstreaming many of these same ethnic foods into American households and culture. Gabaccia concludes that we are "not a multi-ethnic nation, but a nation of multi-ethnics." For culinary history and social history collections. (Index not seen.)ASherry Feintuch, East Shore Lib., Harrisburg, PA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
Plenty of thought-provoking and probably little-known details are presented along the way [in We Are What We Eat]...Gabaccia has a lightness of style, but this should not beguile readers into thinking that this is just a pleasing story-book with vivid illustrations. It is a skillfully written professional history imbued with a social anthropological sensibility. I wish that more British social anthropologists (and sociologists) in this field would trouble themselves to return the compliment by paying such diligent attention to social history. Gabaccia not only embraces the anthropological insight that human beings bestow meaning on food, making it not just good to eat but also good to communicate with, but goes on to grasp the other side of the anthropological debate, which requires detailed analysis of the material and economic circumstances that bring people and food together to allow communicative meanings to be created. But more than this, Gabaccia recognizes that understanding eating habits requires not just one but several histories: of recurring human migrations, of agriculture, of (big) business and of consumption. This intellectual attitude and methodological grip on the study of food and eating is the book's great strength. (Anne Murcott Nature)
Today's multiethnic American diet offers intriguing insight into the character of the nation, the subject of Donna Gabaccia's We Are What We Eat...Rigorously annotated and dense with detail, Gabaccia's writing nevertheless evokes knee-buckled puritans and buckskin-clad settlers, sunbonnets and babushkas, and the clamor of street markets at the turn of the century. Drawing from early American cookbooks and immigrant journals, Gabaccia unravels the nation's earliest 'regional creoles,' dishes combining cultivated ingredients with indigenous plants, game and seafood, enriched by the foodstuffs of Native American traders...Gabaccia explores the journey of these ethnic foods from pushcarts to the national marketplace and how--despite the homogenizing effects of industrialized canning, milling and meatpacking--ethnic cuisines have retained their essential and often ritualized role in American life. (Linda Temple USA Today)
Donna Gabaccia...has assembled an impressive piece of research and writing about [eating]. We Are What We Eat...takes the immigrant metaphor of America--whether it be a melting pot or a tossed salad--and brings it to the dinner table...It's a fascinating trip through everything from the history of Fritos corn chips to the wild rice traditions of American Indians in Minnesota to the rise of ethnic grocery chains in New York City...She sees the popularity of ethnic food as nothing less than a chance to bring together disparate folk--and create a nation of eaters who, through their dining experiences, manage to get along. (Ted Anthony Associated Press)
In this academic, yet readable--even entertaining--work, Ms. Gabaccia explores how ethnicity has influenced American eating habits...She answers why every town in America ended up with a Chinese restaurant, how sacred Italian pasta morphed into Spaghetti-Os and why burritos are filled with everything from beans to bok choy...We Are What We Eat is a unique approach to this country's melting pot, and demonstrates the multicultural side of all Americans. (Forward)
[A] fascinating guided tour of American foodstuffs...Gabaccia pursues the oscillations of 20th-century taste from the bland mass-market fare of Middle America to the revived interest in ethnic cuisine, particularly in phosphorically powerful pepper sauces. Stressing the 'extraordinary diversity' which runs in tandem with 'homogeneous, processed, mass-produced foods,' she insists that America is 'not a multi-ethnic nation, but a nation of multi-ethnics. (Christopher Hirst The Independent)
Donna R. Gabaccia serves up an intriguing appetizer on the growing menu of food history...The book raises intriguing and important questions regarding the cultural meaning of food and the significance of foodways in social change. (Susan Levine Journal of American History)
How did enclaves of immigrants obtain the foods to which they were accustomed in their new homes in America? How did pasta, tacos, and bagels move from ethnic fare to popular American foods? These are the types of questions Gabaccia addresses in this well-researched and thoroughly documented volume. Through case studies and anecdotal records she traces the way immigrant groups, from Colonial times to the present, maintained their culinary identity in spite of efforts to Americanize them. Concurrently, entrepreneurs succeeded in mainstreaming many of these same ethnic foods into American households and culture. Gabaccia concludes that we are 'not a multi-ethnic nation, but a nation of multi-ethnics.' (Sherry Feintuch Library Journal)
Most helpful customer reviews
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful.
Eat, think, and be American
By A Customer
The author of this intriguing treatise examines the evolution of our national identity through the foods Americans have chosen to eat from colonial times to the present. Beginning with the first confluence of diverse European, Native American, and African cuisines in the New World, she shows how ethnic foods gradually transformed American eating habits even as the food itself was altered to meet the demands of an ever-changing nation; indeed, our sense of what it means to be an American has been inextricably linked over the centuries to our dietary habits and preferences. Along the way, the author reveals the fascinating history of many familiar food products and name brands that played surprisingly large roles in shaping our national identity. This well-written and informative volume provides a fresh and insightful perspective on American history.
9 of 16 people found the following review helpful.
It doesn't paint a complete picture
By Matthew M. Yau
I picked up this book in hope of mitigating the intensity of reading back-to-back some very tenacious literature and historical fiction. It was a miscalculation. We Are What We Eat, though interesting in the premise, is nothing but a harangue of facts and data. Some cheese were 80 cents to $1.60 a pound. Some 60,000 people in the industry in 1910 produced some 50 million gallons of wine in California. Nationwide, consumers of inexpensive meals spend $29 million in small mom-and-pop restaurants and $23 billion in fast food chains. New Yorkers tend to patronize less on fast food because family values are emphasized more. The facts go on and on.
The book is a tantalizing (well, it really tires) treatise that examines the evolution and identity of our nation through the ethnically diverse food/cuisines Americans intake from colonial periods to the present. The account begins with the "first Americans", namely the first peoples on the continent: the Native Americans, European-Americans, and African Americans. The subgroups of the European Americans formed some of the major food manufacturers and grocery chains that influentially set the so-called American eating-habits (often too ashamed to be known as American cuisine). From there, the book is a tale of mixing and borrowing and intermingling within the recipes and tastes of different cultural groups, between entrepreneurship and connoisseurship.
The book certainly aims higher than it actually manages. While the author substantially focuses on the origins and thus the fortunes of the enterprising immigrant cooks and grocers, the book fails to discuss and pinpoint the crossing between food and culture. Such deficiency is especially salient in the chapter titled "Nouvelle Creole", in which the Asian influence of dining was mentioned in passing over two pages. The establishment of Benihana (which I do not consider an authentic Japanese restaurant) was mentioned and nothing specific from Chinese cooking was discussed at all. And what about Malaysian cuisine that shaped the dining industry in New York? And the Puerto Rican?
The bottomline of the book is really the acceptance or rejection of ethnic foods in America, instead of an objective, fine-balanced, and compendious account on the impact food has on the American culture. While the book discusses in gush details some of the major (especially the well-known ones from the East Coast) food products and brand names that shape the national identity, it completely ignores the minority cuisines and tastes. 2.5 stars.
12 of 16 people found the following review helpful.
Not very substantial
By Amazon Customer
This book is a moderately interesting discussion of the role ehtnic cuisine has played in the United States through history. I had expected a more focused discussion of specific foods and ethnicities and wider exploration of the interplay between food and culture. This book just doesn't have the depth I had hoped for. The books main focus is on the acceptance or lack thereof of ethnic foods in America. It doesn't explore the impact food has on culture very thoroughly.
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