Deconstructing Eating by Ksotomayor

Deconstructing Eating

Space & Identity April 2016 Issue

Spring ’16 - Food & Communication 360°

Table of Contents Letter from the Editor………………………………………………………………4 Food Explorations Diary…………………………………………………………….6 Philadelphia……………………………………………………………….10 New York………………………………………………………………….14 Barcelona………………………………………………………………….18 A rroz Con Pato: Memories of Oceans Far,Far A way……………………………...22 Chop Suey………………………………………………………………………….30 A sian A merican …………………………………………………………………...36

Dear Reader, Welcome to the “Space & Identity” issue of Deconstructing Eating! This issue is dedicated to looking at issues of assimilation and ethnicity in regard to food and culture. Our examination into the topics of food and culture begin with the “Food Exploration Diary” which investigates the intersection between space and ethnicity revolving around the question, “Who is allowed in a certain space?” We then continue through a recipe interview with Vitalia Sotomayor, my mom, who talks about her favorite dish, arroz con pato, from a very special cookbook she owns. She goes into the nostalgia of cooking this dish and how it transports her to her country, Peru. The interest in cookbooks continues with the actual cooking of Sub Gum Chop Suey from the cookbook Mandarin Chop Suey Cook Book. Lastly, we look into “What is Asian American?”through examining the cookbook Lucky Rice. My hope for this issue is that the reader leaves with questions and answers about the intersection of food and space to the creation of their own identity. Sincerely,

Kristal Antoinette Sotomayor -

FOOD EXPLORATIONS: PHILADELPHIA / NYC / BARCELONA

“Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are.” ―

Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

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FOOD EXPLORATION DIARIES: PHILADELPHIA/NEW YORK/BARCELONA In an epic travel tour of three differing locations – Philadelphia Chinatown, New York Chinatown, and Barcelona, Spain – I ponder the question: Who can inhabit ethnic food spaces?

This exploration examines three different renowned culinary locations by examining the translation and use of space by ethnic minorities. Located within a larger, dominating society while also being a large tourist attraction, Philadelphia and New York Chinatowns as well as the Argentinean empanada restaurant in Barcelona, have to navigate between translating and presenting their culture to that in which they physically inhabit. In "L'étrange Destin De Wangrin or the Political Accommodation of Interpretation" by Sathya Rao, translation is defined as “simultaneously serving the colonizer’s dominant language… and giving oneself the opportunity to manipulate it” (223). In other words, translation is the colonized’s ability to maneuver both the colonizer’s language and their own. In this exploration, the ethnic spaces are the colonized subjects that have to navigate the expectations and culture of the dominant society in which they located. In trying to steer through constant translation, it brings up larger questions: Who inhabits the spaces? Are the space of Chinatowns and ethnic restaurants in Barcelona for the ethnic people who live there, the people of the dominant society, or the tourists? Through these three food explorations, I hope to understand the complexity of ethnic food space ownership.

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Philadelphia Map -

Philadelphia Chinatown In the first expedition through Philadelphia Chinatown with fellow foodies Yuyan Ji and Ashvika Dhir, we were inspired by the novel Pow! by Mo Yan, searching the selections of meat in the grocery stores of Chinatown. In Pow!, the protagonist, Luo Xiaotong, relates the story of his life through the use of meat as he speaks to the Wise Monk. In the book Mythologies by Roland Barthes, the consumption of foods is mythologized as an integral part of national identity and culture. Barthes creates the mythology of food as cultural indicators through his language and use of historical events. By creating a link between food and nation, Barthes creates a metaphor in which foods comes to signify more than just the fulfillment of hunger. A similar mythologizing of food occurs in Mo Yan’s Pow!. Within the novel Pow!, meat surpasses its uses as physical nourishment to describe other characters and the village, becoming a metaphor used to describe human behavior. Mo Yan genders meat as the worth of women is determined by how well they can cook meat as an indicator of their sexual allure and societal value. This gender distinction is also seen by the interactions characters have with meat, as men butcher meat and women cook meat. Through the mythologizing of meat, the food becomes a metaphor used to characterize people and society as a whole. Inspired by Mo Yan’s use of meat to describe the village in Pow!, Yuyan, Ashvika, and I used this mythologizing model to observe Philadelphia Chinatown’s interaction with meat. We targeted five stores close to Friendship Arch and recorded the types of meat available, looking at three forms of meat in particular: frozen super-sealed meat, refrigerated plastic wrapped meat, and fresh butchered meat.

The Saturday afternoon trip began at Great World Supermarket located on Arch Street close to Friendship Arch. In the store, we found very little meat except for a small freezer with few selections of hot pot meats, contrary to the sign outside that had pictures depicting meat, seafood, and vegetables. The inside of the store contained mostly fresh produce with aisles of vegetables taking up the majority of the storeroom and the customers were all Asian women. Similarly to the first store, two other stores we observed also contained few meat products and a vast array of fruits and vegetables. The third grocery store, Chung Mei Food Market on Race Street had very little meat except for some Chinese sausage made in the US and a limited selection of jerky. The store was a family owned business that primarily sold Chinese medicinal items and had a variety of Asian and Non-Asian customers that were mainly female. The fourth stop, S&D Market had a slim selection of meat, mostly hot pot meat like in the first store, and fruit and vegetables were on display throughout the small store. S&D Market also had a primarily Asian, female clientele.

Three forms of meat!

Back at 11th street, our second stop was Hung Fa Food Market which, similarly to our final stop, Asian Supermarket, had more diverse products and customers. Both grocery stores had many similar qualities, with a large selection of all three forms of meat we were looking for: butchered, plastic sealed refrigerated meat, and frozen super-sealed meat. Amid the selections of meat were different pieces of poultry such as chicken, duck, chicken heart, chicken gizzards, and pork liver, among which whole chicken was particularly popular at Hung Fa Food Market. Both stores contained the most variety of foods, paralleling the wide range of clientele from diverse ethnicities, genders, and ages. -

While searching for meat in Philadelphia Chinatown grocery stores, it was interesting to observe the gender relations between grocery shoppers and who handled the distribution of the meat. Similarly to the gendering of meat in Mo Yanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Pow!, interactions between consumers and meat handlers was gendered, i.e. men were butchers and sellers while women were consumers. In addition, the variety of meats available at each store differed, some catering to specific clientele such as Chung Mei Food Market which specialized in Chinese medicinal products and, therefore, had few meat options. However, the spaces with the largest assortments of meat and other foods, Hung Fa Food Market and Asian Supermarket, had the most diverse clientele of differing ages, genders, and ethnicities. Through observing the relationship between space, clients, and the availability of meat, it allowed us to examine who inhabited these particular grocery stores in Chinatown and to understand the grocery shopping culture of Chinatown. However, this mapping trek brings up a few questions about food spaces and ethnic identity, which we will discuss throughout this magazine: Who is a particular space designed or designated for? Who decides who belongs in these spaces? How does ethnicity effect a personâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ability to navigate these food spaces?

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New York City Map -

After exploring Philadelphia Chinatown and noting the relationship between food and space relative to gender and ethnicity, I approached the space of New York Chinatown with the question: who is this space for? After noting that grocery stores were primarily a womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s space with some grocery stores catering to an Asian clientele and some to a younger and ethnically varied group, I wanted to examine New York Chinatown as a whole. My trip with fellow foodie Ariana Hall began after a big, delicious meal of dim sum at the Golden Unicorn. We left the restaurant searching for our first stop, Vivi Bubble Tea. A common feature of most Chinatowns, it wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t very surprising to find a bubble tea place. We then followed our sweet tooth to Munchies Paradise, a candy store that sold different types of dried fruits and fish per pound as well as typical gummy candies and pre-packaged treats. This store had a distinct smell, sweet with hints of different spices according to the treats you stood near. The music inside the store was in Chinese and all the customers were Asian and were speaking mostly Chinese. Crashing midday, we stopped by Cha Chan Tang, a detour for some much needed coffee. This store was completely different from Vivi Bubble Tea, a coffee shop being a bit unexpected to find in Chinatown. The inside was modern, high-tech, and smelled of coffee and tea. There was writing in English and Chinese on the walls about the history of Chinatown along with digital window panels to create a transportative experience. The customers were of varied ethnicities and genders and there were more English speakers in this store then in the other stores. The menu was completely in English and seemed to cater to tourists in its design and layout, being a more American style coffee shop within Chinatown.

Vivi Bubble Tea & Cha Chan Tang

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The fourth stop was at a general Gift Shop which had Chinese and English on the signs as well as drawings. On the inside, there were mostly New York souvenirs such as t-shirts, shot glasses, and bags with a little row of the Asian-style clothing along the back. This store, unlike Cha Chan Tang, distinctly separated the Chinese elements from the American New York souvenirs, catering to an American clientele by segregation rather than the Americanization tactic of Cha Chan Tang. In the small corner, the Asian-style clothing were very distinct and separated from the majority of the store, a metaphor for Chinatown within the United States, a pocket of space where Chinese and other Asian immigrants could live and an Oriental experience could be bought by American consumers.

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Gift Shop (above), Yunhong Chopstick Store (top right) & Oo35mm.com (bottom right) -

After observing the partitioning of the gift stop, we stopped by Yunhong Chopstick Store, an elegant shop specializing in only chopsticks. Displayed within the store were a wide variety of chopstick sets lining the shelves on the walls with a glass display in the center of the space. Unlike the gift shop which segregated the â&#x20AC;&#x153;Asianâ&#x20AC;? products, Yunhong Chopstick Store was devoted entirely to the sale of one particular Asian product. Another store that specialized in Asian products was a Korean cosmetics shop called Oo35mm.com. This shop sold a variety of Korean beauty products, particularly facial masks, cleansers, and lotions. Inside the store, female customers of varying ethnicities shopped for cosmetics. After observing the space of different stores and restaurants in New York, we have conflicting answers to the question: who is a space for? Looking at the different beverage shops in Chinatown, Vivi Bubble Tea and Cha Chan Tang, both cater to a different clientele with Cha Chan Tang being a more Americanized beverage shop for tourists. The Gift Shop was a metaphor for the overall space of Chinatown in the United States being a segregated area from the main New York City, Chinatown serving as a place where orientalism can be consumed. However, one cannot ignore that Chinatown is not only for the tourists but also for the residents who live there with shops like Yunhong Chopstick Store and Oo35mm.com serving the community needs. This exploration of Chinatown brings up issues of spatial ownership and othering along with identity and belonging, as these conflicting ideas coincide within the same space, we continue our global exploration observing an ethnic food restaurant in Barcelona, Spain.

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Barcelona Ethnic Food

Barcelona Ethnic Food Much like the United States, Spain is a multi-cultural nation with distinct regions, such as Catalonia and the Basque Country, and a diverse immigrant population. Being in Spain, a country that is foreign to me, it was a bit of a culture shock to see foreign, ethnic food restaurants. It didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t become apparent to me that different countries have their own ethnic minorities that establish their own restaurants until I walked through the streets of Spain with fellow foodie Selena Martinez. It turns out, Barceloneta is home to many Halal restaurants, a few noodle shops, and one Argentinean empanada place, LA FABRICA. Located in Plaza la Llana, LA FABRICA is a small little restaurant selling Argentinean style empanadas to go or to eat at their standing bar area. LA FABRICA is run by two female Argentinean servers and an Argentinean chef that prepares the vast varieties of empanadas. Ranging from different meat or meatless options to spicy alternatives, LA FABRICA provides many different types of empanadas to suit the needs of varying clientele.

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When asked about the different adaptations of empanadas available at the restaurant, one server stated that the empanadas there were popular because, despite vast cultural differences, “there are similar flavors and that is what people like”. Personally, the empanada adaptation that I liked the most was the meat empanadas because they tasted exactly like my mom’s empanadas. In the space of a small Argentinean empanada restaurant in Barcelona, a bite of the empanada transported me to my home in western Pennsylvania and to my roots in Peru. In the pursuit of an answer to the question “Who is a space for?” it also beings into question “Who is a space not for?” The space of LA FABRICA was for foreigners and tourists just as much as it was for Spaniards. Who, then, is excluded from the space of Barceloneta? Or other major touristic food locations like Philadelphia and New York Chinatown? Although certain shops in these spaces were aimed toward specific clientele, the space was very much cohabited by many different ethnic groups, genders, and ages. Looking back at Sathya Rao’s quote from "L'étrange Destin De Wangrin or the Political Accommodation of Interpretation", translation is “simultaneously serving the colonizer’s dominant language… and giving oneself the opportunity to manipulate it” (223), the spaces I explored all negotiated interactions between the ethnic inhabitants, the dominant culture, and the foreign tourists. In trying to determine how a space interacts with the different identities that flow in and out, the answer to the question “Who is a space for?” differs according to perspective. The people who live in the space will claim the area as their own or, in the case of Chinatowns, it was, historically, the only area that Chinese immigrants were legally allowed to inhabit separating them from the white majority. Although Chinatowns were originally a space of segregation, the popularity of Chinese American food made the area a place of cultural mixing as -

white clientele purchased Chinese American food. One the other hand, the introduction of mass tourism disrupts the integrated use of space. As tourists enter areas, they manipulate the economy of the location and change the way locals interact with a space as they sell an experience, adding another purpose for the space that complicates the original use of the location. What I learned about spatial ownership is that itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a very subjective topic, one in which each person has a differing opinion or availability of choice according to their identity as either an ethnic minority, a cultural majority, or a tourist. Our interactions with spaces are dictated by our individual identities and personalities. A space is designed to target certain groups but when it comes to who can be in a space, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s more of a question of perspective and historical factors of the majority population.

ARROZ CON PATO: A MEMORY OF OCEANS FAR, FAR AWAY

“I was certain to find the familiar sting of salt, but what I needed to know was what kind: kitchen, sweat, tears or the sea.” ― Monique Truong, The Book of Salt (5) -

ARROZ CON PATO: A MEMORY

OCEANS FAR, FAR AWAY

Every Christmas, my mom would take her favorite Peruvian cookbook titled “Qué Cocinaré?”, or “What will I Cook?” in Spanish, off the shelf in the kitchen and open it up to the recipe of alfajores, Peruvian cookies that contain a caramel center and a lightly dusted powdered sugar exterior. A lfajores are Christmas. Helping my mom prepare these cookies, taking a bite from them, and having it melt in my mouth represents my family’s heritage and our experiences on cold wintery days, a cup of A buelita Mexican hot chocolate in hand. For me, holidays don’t start with school vacation but with my mom cracking open her cookbook and the aroma of Peruvian cuisine. In “Remembering past(s): The construction of cosmopolitan Istanbul through nostalgic flavors” by Defne Karaosmanoglu, nostalgic cookbooks are described as an “attempt to bring back or recreate a world we have already lost through cooking and eating” (39). On the old beat-up, tattered yellow cover of the cookbook “Qué Cocinaré?” are the memories of the women in my family, including the marks of my mom’s past and the hardships she faced when starting her life over in the United States. Inside the weathered pages lay the recipes of her childhood and homeland, a physical piece of Peru that has been transported to her new life in the United States. The particular recipe from “Qué Cocinaré?” that symbolizes my mom’s past is the dish arroz con pato, or “rice with duck”, because, as my mom elaborated:

“It was the dish my mom would cook when we went to the beach with the whole neighborhood.” The dish is stained green with cilantro and the duck is garnished with beer and pisco, the national alcoholic beverage of Peru, for flavor. The aroma of the spices and duck cooking together on the stovetop bring back the scent of a particular moment in my mom’s life at the Ocean of Miguel Grau with her family and friends: “The most important part of my childhood we spent it at the beach, sitting in front of the beach. All my vacation time, we always went to play at the beach and my parents took us there and we would have to drive back. I remember that was the main dish my mom would cook and the smell in the morning when I wake up to go to the beach, wearing my swimsuit waiting for my friends, and the smell was in all the house with that flavor and the spices. After arriving back home, after playing for hours, we were so hungry and that food was so special and delicious. We would share with a lot of kids and I was never hungry after eating that.” -

FUN FACT: My mom inherited

“Qué Cocinaré?”when she married my father. -

Note the generations of food stained pages of

“Qué Cocinaré?”

In order to prepare this dish at home in the United States, my mom would drive far to get to the nearest Latino food store, I would usually be in the passenger’s side seat trying to make sure we got off at the right exit. Living in the United States, being able to find the right ingredients or at least those that are as similar as possible is key because “people use food to cultivate relationships and transcend social barriers” (Karaosmanoglu 40), food is what allows my family to come together. In the aisles of the colorful Latino grocery store, my mom would hunt for the ingredients of her past, “The ingredients that I need they don’t have in any stores, they only have it in special Latino food stores. They don’t have it anywhere else. It’s not like going to Walmart, when you go inside, I really want to go and check every product and smell it and touch it and feel like I’m in a grocery store from my country. Even the smell in the store is different.” After acquiring all the necessary ingredients, my mom would be ready to cook. Taking the cookbook “Qué Cocinaré?” down off the shelf, she would carefully read the recipe and prepare the meal. With a frying pan in one hand and spatula in the other, she would artfully fry the food and then combine it in a large pot. She described how it was like to cook the arroz con pato, “Everything about preparing the dish is nostalgia. Everything means that when I cook this, the smell of the dish has to be perfect or I’m not happy with it. And the time that it has to be cooked, the texture, everything has to be really perfect. Every time I make it I try to make it the same and to not change anything.”

“Everything about preparing the dish is nostalgia.” However, it isn’t always possible to find every ingredient in the Latino groceries stores of Western Pennsylvania. Whenever my mom would come back from Peru, she would arrive with two huge suitcases full to their capacity with food. Any clothing inside the suitcases were there solely to cushion cases of Peruvian chocolates, candies, and spices that cannot be found in all of Pennsylvania. When it comes to arroz con pato, my mom was crafty to not change the recipe too much: “Instead, I use chicken because it’s hard to find duck around here. I try not to have many substitutions because I believe that the flavor is very important and I have to be careful to have the right ingredients to make it the right flavor and order the ingredients, the special chilies I need, or driving for hours to get the ingredients I need that are important.” For my mom, the smell of arroz con pato is essential to getting the right taste. Through the smell of the dish, my mom is transported as “cuisine can be viewed as a means of connecting; not only does it articulate nostalgia for a homeland, but it also helps to compose and recompose cultural and historical boundaries” (Karaosmanoglu 40) allowing my mom to relive the past in her homeland in our kitchen in Western Pennsylvania. My mom has become an expert at cooking arroz con pato, being able to now cook it by olfactory memory, a memory of the sea: “It’s so important to get the right ingredients because without the ingredients there isn’t that special flavor, that

smell in the kitchen. When I’m cooking, it is supposed to smell the way you need it to be. Without the right ingredients, you can’t get it to taste the way it’s supposed to be.” In regard to cooking, my mom often states: “In my country, we show our love to other people through food.” Growing up, my mom would only cook Peruvian food and, much like when my mom would wake up to the smell of arroz con pato, I would often come home from a long day of school to a house emitting the aroma of oceans far, far away. Every time we moved or went to visit someplace new during vacation, my mom mapped out Peruvian restaurants to eat at. McDonald’s was not an option. The foods of my mom’s youth in Peru are the foods of my youth in the United States, the taste of my heritage and the memories of Peru stain every dish like cilantro in a plate of arroz con pato. When I asked my mom about why it was so important for her to cook arroz con pato of my brother and I in the United States she replied: “So my kids will grow up with that flavor and think that it is not a dish you can get in any restaurant around and in order to get that dish you need to go to a Peruvian restaurant and that is kind of difficult in America. In certain states, there are not any Peruvian restaurants, they have a lot where there is more manipulation of foods. And there is not anywhere can you go and order it and that makes it special too.” Forged between the print of the recipes in the cookbook “Qué Cocinaré?”, is a space and vacuum in which it holds memories of each generation’s past and the future of my family. In other words, as stated by Karaosmanoglu, “Food is used as a means to communicate sameness and difference… It becomes a tool in building relationships, (dis)connecting people, and expressing cultural differences. It is also a means of separating the past from the present and of connecting different pasts” (39). The intersection of my grandma’s memories, my mom’s memories, and my memories are evident on the food stained pages of the cookbook and a plate of Peruvian food. Our interpretation and memories of the food are different but have a common tie to the food creating a new joint, shared memory passed down through every bite and smell. Instead of having individual ties to this cookbook and dish of arroz con pato, we have one long, continuous strand of evolving experiences as the smell of the sea comes to represent different experiences for every generation: the “kitchen, sweat, tears of the sea” (Truong 5). Having passed oceans and hands, the cookbook “Qué Cocinaré?” has been transplanted and transcribed by every women in my family who handles it. With every dish, with every page of the old cookbook, time will unalterably change them but the love within every dish will stay the same. As my mom sums up:

“It’s not just food, it’s not just a dish, it is not just something you eat any day. It’s more than that, it’s tradition, flavor, something special, something unique. That is why it’s important and special and the history of my past.” -

aweita.pe

Arroz con pato Recipe*: INGREDIENTS: 1/3 cup of lard 1 ½ kilo of duck ¾ cup of diced onions ½ teaspoon of black pepper ½ teaspoon of cumin 1 teaspoon of garlic 1 cup of blended cilantro leaves 1 green chili in strips, add chili to liking 1 cup of pisco 3 cups of water 1 cup of dark beer salt and pepper.

HEAT: the lard and fry the pieces of duck, put it aside and, in the same lard fry the onions, garlic, chili, salt, pepper, cumin, and add the pieces of duck, pisco, and let it cook until the duck is tender, add the water and beer and when it boils over add the rice. COVER: the pot and cook 17 minutes on low heat, add the peas** and serve right away.

*Translated recipe from the cookbook “Qué Cocinaré?” **Note there is a typo in the cookbook: peas were not added to the ingredients list at the beginning. -

What is Sub Gum Chop Suey?

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CHOP SUEY Back in February, my group (consisting of Isabell Gerbig, Stephanie Montalvan, Austin Cheney, and Yuyan Ji) and I got together to create the dish “Sub Gum Chop Suey” from the Mandarin Chop Suey Cook Book (1928) published in Chicago. This cookbook cites its own authenticity by stating, at the beginning, that the work was translated from a Chinese chef. Yet, the cookbook does not offer an original source for the work. The fictive translated origin of the cookbook creates a sense of authenticity for the reader and reinforces the authority of the fictive translator and cook. When it comes to the physical space of the Mandarin Chop Suey Cook Book, the front cover consists of oriental script in English with Chinese characters below it, framed in a florallike pattern with the following description at the bottom: “Recipes for a variety of savory, delicious and wholesome genuine Chinese dishes” (see photo below). As a fellow group member, Austin, pointed out in her research, “Sub Gum is a Cantonese term, while Chop Suey is considered a ‘Chinese’ phrase and the recipe we found is in a Mandarin cook book. In this way Sub Gum Chop Suey represents a lack of understanding of what is ‘Chinese’ or ‘Asian’ in American society.” The lack of the fictive translator’s ability to differentiate the two different forms of Chinese, Mandarin and Cantonese, shows the falsehood of the history that the cookbook asserts for itself and points out flaws in the translator/cook’s ability to write the cookbook. Instead of actually aiming to create a cookbook that contains actual translated recipes, the recipes within the cookbook are Americanized, domesticated forms of Chinese food.

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In “The Translator’s Invisibility” by Lawrence Venuti, he proposes that the reader of a translated text does not notice the work of the translator as the “readers usually respond to the translation of a foreign text, whether prose or poetry, as if the text had been originally written in their language, as if it were not in fact a translation; on the other hand, a translation is judged acceptable (by editors, reviewers and readers) when it reads fluently, when the absence of any awkward phrasings, unidiomatic constructions or confused meanings gives the appearance that the translation reflects the foreign author's personality or intention or the essential meaning of the original text” (179). In other words, through both the assumption of the reader that a translated text was originally written in the reader’s own language and the fact that translations are sought and valued if written fluently in the translated language, the presence of the translator is invisible. Through the invisibility of the translator, a work becomes domesticated into the translated language. In a similar way, the job of the fictive translator of the Mandarin Chop Suey Cook Book is to domesticate the recipes although the fictive translator makes their presence known as a selling point for the cookbook. By flipping the idea of an invisible translator by reinforcing the fact that the cookbook was translated, the recipes are domesticated while also being classified as the foreign “other”. The “othering” of the recipe and culture that the recipes supposedly come from, reinforces Asian, oriental stereotypes seen by the text on the very cover of the cookbook. The dish, in particular, that exemplifies both the domestication and the reinforcement of the foreign other that the fictive translator of the cookbook reinforces is the dish Sub Gum Chop Suey. While flipping through the cookbook with my group, the recipe for Sub Gum Chop Suey stuck out to us because of the name, “sub gum”, which none of us had ever seen before, and due to the fact that one of the ingredients used in the dish was called “Chinese sauce". While the cookbook did not provide a definition for either of the two terms, it did contain a section titled “Mandarin Sauce or Chop Suey Sauce” which ambiguously explained the difference between the two sauces (see photo below). When we cooked the dish, my group ended up substituting in soy sauce for “Chinese sauce” and yellow peppers for pimentos in the recipe. One of the difficulties of cooking this dish was that no one knew how it was supposed to end up tasting or looking like. After cooking the dish, my group set off to research the ingredients and origin of the dish on three different archives: the New York Public Library Menus Archive, Los Angeles Public Library Menu Archive, and Culinary Institute of American Menu Archive.

The first ingredient from the menu I researched was “Chinese sauce”. However, I was unable to find any mention of “Chinese sauce” on the New York or Culinary Institute Archives except for one dish from the “Harbin Inn” called Kidney with Chinese Sauce for $1.85 in the 1970s. This menu did not have descriptions for the dishes, so I was not able to figure out what “Chinese sauce” was. I then changed gears with my research and, instead, searched for “sub gum” on the archives to find menus with descriptions of the dishes. It turned out that the word “sub gum” had four different forms of spellings and was in all different sorts of food forms, such as desserts, soups, and wontons. Looking through various menus from many time periods, even the definition of “chop suey” gets much more confusing as there is not one correct interpretation of the food. Some definitions of sub gum chop suey I was able to find included “Cut like dice”, implying that the food is chopped up differently from other forms of chop suey. In the New York Archives, I found sub-gum and chop suey in general to be composed of chicken more than any other form of meat. In the Tao Yuan and Forbidden City menus I found the use of two different sets of ingredients one containing bean sprouts and water chestnuts and the other containing pickles and sweet and sour sauce (see photo above). These two district sets of ingredients were also found in other menus such as the more recent Forbidden City Menu, the Midtown Chinese Menu, and the Stork Club Menu, which included bamboo shoots (see photo below). However, a common ingredient in most of the dishes seemed to be almonds, which the recipe in the Mandarin Chop Suey Cook Book also contained. Another defining characteristic of chop suey as seen in the Oscar’s Confucius Cafe menu is the addition of rice rather than noodles as a distinction between chop suey and other dishes (see photo below).

Overall, researching the New York Public Library and Culinary Institute Menu Archives, I was able to come up with a few defining characteristics of Chop Suey but some characteristics conflict such as what ingredients are used and how it is supposed to be prepared and consumed. Austin looked up the definitions of the foods and found that sub gum is “a type of American Chinese dish in which one or more meats and/or seafood are mixed with vegetables and sometimes also noodles, rice, or soup and that the term ‘sub gum’ is Cantonese and means ‘numerous and varied’”. In addition, Austin found that “chop suey is also an American Chinese dish consisting of meat, often chicken, fish, beef, prawns, or pork and eggs, cooked quickly with vegetables such as bean sprouts, cabbage and celery, and bound in a starch-thickened sauce. Its name translates literally to ‘assorted pieces’”. The lack of a single definition of sub gum and chop suey through searching in the cookbook, online, and on the menu archives shows that Sub Gum Chop Suey is a metaphor for the lack of understanding of what is “Chinese” or “Asian” in American society. It instead reinforces the Americanization and “othering” of Chinese food and culture in order to domesticate it into a more understandable and consumable form.

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What is Asian American Anyway?

WHAT IS ASIAN AMERICAN ANYWAY?

In "Translation and the Trials of the Foreign" by Antoine Berman, translation is explained as the “trial of the foreign”, meaning that it creates a distinction between “us”, the translator, and “them”, the foreign text. The foreign text then has to be violently “opened up” when translated, so that “the foreign work is uprooted from its own language-ground (sol-de-langue)” (240) in order to be adapted for the translator and the translated language. In other words, translation violently forces both cultures to adapt and change in order to accommodate translation. This forceful adaptation of languages and cultures to fit one another is also seen within identity politics between ethnic minorities that must assimilate to the customs of the larger majority. Mirroring many of the issues face by ethnic food restaurants in dominant cultures, this divide between racial identity and acceptance in the larger society is also brought up when looking at people’s relationship between food and their own cultures. The cookbook Lucky Rice by Danielle Chang aims to bridge Asian cuisine with that of the rest of the world. At the beginning of the cookbook, Chang describes Asian culture as transcending global borders and becoming more recognized: “More and more, we’re sitting down together to enjoy bowls of rice rather than to break bread” (10). She attributes this increasing interest and knowledge of Asian literature and culture to Asian cuisine as “our bellies have taught us well” (10). Chang supports this argument by explaining the recent separation between different forms of Asian cuisine, there now being separate Japanese, Thai, and Chinese restaurants signaling the increase in culinary knowledge as “our repertoire is no longer limited to fortune cookies, takeout Chinese, and California rolls” (10). Adding in personal anecdotes and experiences, Chang explains that, as she grew up, so did the global perception of Asian cuisine. As a child, Chang went to school with a “chicken feet and stewed eggs on rice lunchbox instead of PB&J” (11). While Chang initially struggled to assimilate, she eventually grew up to cherish Asian cuisine and, in 2010, she started the food festival LUCKYRICE in New York. Citing her own interactions with food as a metaphor for global acceptance of Asian cuisine, Chang aims to unite Asian and global foods. However, Chang’s intentions behind her cookbook quickly become skewed as she creates comparisons between Asian and American culture, separating the two cultures she sought to unite. Through comparisons of cultures, Chang reinforces the violence of translation as she adapts one culture to fit into the ideology of another culture. By having comparisons, Chang makes Asian cuisine easier to understand for her American readership making Asian culture a domesticated novelty. In the initial “Street Eats” section of the cookbook Lucky Rice, Chang outlines the recipe for “Barbecued Squid-On-A-Stick”, or Ikayaki. Chang describes this dish as: “as much a favorite in Asia as hot dogs in America” (Chang 18). She cites that this dish is served from Kyoto, Japan to -

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WHAT IS ASIAN AMERICAN ANYWAY?

Beijing, China and would work as “a perfect spread for a summer barbecue” (18). The wording Chang uses in the brief introduction of this dish aims at the American or non-Asian reader who knows little about Asian cuisine, thereby refuting her assertion in her introduction that people have become more knowledgeable about Asian cuisine. Although the recipe sounds delicious it is definitely not a dish for every reader to try as it requires cutting apart eight whole squids. Although it does provide a note on how to cut the squid, the type of reader who would actually cook this recipe seems limited. By explaining the appeal to this dish at the beginning of the recipe through comparisons with American culture, Chang hopes to entice the reader to try this adventurous dish while domesticating it for consumption in a typical American household. Another recipe is that undergoes domesticating translation is of that for Hot Pot. In the introduction of the “Hot Pot” recipe, Chang explains that it is “at times referred to as ‘Chinese fondue’” (Chang 89). This recipe is sold to the reader as an experience dish, where the fun comes from cooking your own food. Chang concludes the introduction by explaining that it is a popular Chinese and Japanese dish and that since there are so many variations, the cook may choose to purchase as “Lover’s Hot Pot” that is divided in two sections. Much like with the “Barbecued Squid-On-A-Stick” recipe, Chang makes the origins of the dish appealing to the American reading audience by comparing it to well-known fondue and by romanticizing the dish. As part of the recipe, Chang also includes a photo of Hot Pot with origami and a Buddha laid out at the top and bottom of the image. As with other photos in this cookbook, there are “Asian” novelties spaced out amongst the dishes, such as ceramic “Asian” figures, lucky cats, red envelopes and other Chinese New Year decorations, and fortune cookies. By adding “Asian” novelties to the photos of the dishes, it makes the dish approachable and just “Asian” enough for the reader, creating a distinction between the dominant American culture and the “othered” Asian culture. An added recipe that was had an Americanized introduction was of that for “Peruvian Stir-Fried Beef with Tomatoes”, otherwise known as Lomo Saltado, which was featured in the “Asian Mash-Ups” section of the cookbook. Chang’s introduction to this dish includes a brief summary of the introduction of Chinese into Peru and the creation of chifa, Peruvian Chinese food, which she compares to the history of Chinese immigration and Chinese restaurant creation within the United States. By comparing Peruvian history with that of the United States, Chang makes the dish and the Peruvian and Chinese cultures the dish comes from more approachable for the American reader. In describing Peruvian history through the use of American history, it is not only inaccurate but also dilutes both the Chinese and Peruvian cultures that the dish originated from into a form that is more pleasing for Americans, a food that is domesticated from two different cultures. Danielle Chang originally set out for Lucky Rice to unite Asian and global foods, spreading awareness of old and new Asian dishes created by this global interaction. In reality, the cookbook failed to unite and rather created clear distinctions between American and Asian -

culture. Although the “Asian Mash-Ups” sections did provide recipes that depicted global interactions with Asian food, as seen the in recipe for “Peruvian Stir-Fried Beef with Tomatoes”, Chang still related the cultural history in the introductions of the recipes by comparing them with American foods and history. In this way, Asian and American cultures are united in that Asian cuisines are described in terms of American food and history. However, this creates a distinction rather than the unity that Chang sought to create. Similarly to the Mandarin Chop Suey Cook Book, Lucky Rice also domesticates the dishes it describes forcing the recipes to assimilate to the dominant culture. Through the use of the invisible translator, the violent integration of Asian cuisine and culture, the dishes are sold as approachable in an American context. Overall, the cookbook Lucky Rice does not examine Asian food in a global context but, rather, makes Asian food easier for an American audience to understand and consume.

CITATIONS: Food Explorations: Rao, Sathya. "L'ĂŠtrange Destin De Wangrin or the Political Accommodation of Interpretation." Translating and Interpreting Conflict. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007. 22350. Print. Recipe: Karaosmanoglu, Defne. "Remembering Past(s): The Construction of Cosmopolitan Istanbul through Nostalgic Flavors." Food as Communication: Communication as Food. Ed. Janet M. Cramer, Carlnita P. Greene, and Lynn Walters. New York: Peter Lang, 2011. 39-55. Print. Truong, Monique T. D. The Book of Salt. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. Print.

Chop Suey: Venuti, Lawrence. "The Translator's Invisibility." Criticism 28.2 (1986): 179-212. Web. Asian American: Berman, Antoine. "Translation and the Trials of the Foreign." The Translation Studies Reader. By Lawrence Venuti. Trans. Lawrence Venuti. 3rd ed. London: Taylor and Francis, 2012. 240-53. Print. Chang, Danielle. Lucky Rice: Stories and Recipes from Night Markets, Feasts, and Family Tables. New York: Crown Group, 2016. Print.