Pilaf, Pozole, and Pad Thai: American Women and Ethnic Food (review)

This anthology of eleven original essays, edited by Sherrie Inness, focuses on American women's experiences with ethnic food and their cravings for exotic dishes like pilaf (Middle Eastern rice), pozole (Mexican stew), and pad thai (Thai-style noodles). In part 1, the authors reminisce about foods from within their ethnic groups, whereas the essays in part 2 discuss what happens when people cross ethnic lines and embark on food adventuring. Inness explains that the theme tying the collection together is that eating ethnic has repercussions that morally implicate everyone.

In the lead article, Paul Christensen focuses on his mother, who created macaroni and gravy to recapture her Sicilian past. Embedded in her tempestuous memories, this dish, and the work that went into preparing it, helped her deal with her dismal urban existence and unfulfilled marriage. In contrast, Cathie English discusses how her Polish grandmother and mother gave her the discipline to prepare family foods and find her own specialty in making pies. Moving beyond the family, Leanne Trapedo Sims's interview with world traveler and cookbook collector, Dalia Carmel, records meanings that specific foods have had for this Israeli living in New York City. By including her reactions to Carmel in her transcription, Sims shows that food in all its manifestations has been a major stabilizing force throughout her informant's life.

The essays by Lynn Z. Bloom, Linda Murray Berzok, and Arelene Voski Avakian that follow demonstrate that ethnicity is not as important as food, family, and occupation. In a personal essay, Bloom mentions her German grandmother's influence in her cooking, but she is more interested in showing how work, food, friends, and family support each other in her life. Berzok received her deceased mother's annotated recipe cards that covered her cooking activities from 1952 to 1992. Situating the collection during the cold war era (and beyond), Berzok shows that her Swedish American mother followed a behavioral cooking pattern typical of a second-generation ethnic woman in her desire to be an efficient homemaker capable of whipping up meals using the latest appliances and processed ingredients. Finally, Avakian uses her cooking skills as an Armenian American and her knowledge of feminist politics as a lesbian to develop a relationship with her partner's hostile aunt by serving the lady Armenian dishes.

In the second section, Meredith E. Abarca and Beney Blend discuss kitchen politics from the perspectives of Chicana and Native American writers and working-class women to show that these individuals use the language of everyday cooking to express their personal and political views and withstand the incursions of the dominant culture. Doris Friedensohn, Lisa Heldke, and Heather Schell each contribute discussions of food adventuring. Friedensohn narrates her eating experiences across Mexico and New York and wonders whether her role as a tourist is contributing to the demise of "authentic" food traditions. Heldke argues that, when American women prepare ethnic meals, they perpetuate a colonialist tradition that oppresses Third World minorities, who contribute their recipes (and get no credit) and labor with little pay to satisfy our voracious desire for something new. Schell looks at the food adventuring question through the eyes of a tourist visiting New Orleans and proposes that people indulge in consuming exotic foods not only to show how cosmopolitan they are or to escape bland middle-class American culture, but also to engage in the predatory pleasures of eating anthropomorphized items with female or minority traits.

There is much thought-provoking material in this volume. Depending on your point of view, you will like all, some, or none of these pieces. My preference lies in the first section, with those ethnic women who reminisce about the importance of food in their lives. The more analytical articles, such as Sims's innovative transcription of Dalia Carmel and Berzok's...