Chop Suey, USA: The Story of Chinese Food in America

Chen's decades-in-the-making sociological history of Chinese food in the U.S. is both a thoroughly researched and reported academic work and an engaging popular history. An associate professor of history at UC-Irvine, Chen vividly recounts the Western adoption of Chinese food; the Chinese "mastery of Western cooking" with dishes like gumbo (recipe also provided); the emergence of Chinese-American communities; and the arrival of Chinese food in the 1850s. "Their experience was not simply a food story but a highly political one that intersected with the cultural and socioeconomic currents in the fast changing city," he writes, using the food narrative, as he does throughout, to raise larger questions about community, identity, class, and globalization. As Chen points out:"Chinese restaurants rose to serve cheap food largely to underprivileged American consumers. Coming to China a century later, however, American fast food became an important part of the lifestyle of young and affluent consumers." His overall aim, to make the study of food an "exciting intellectual endeavor," adds up to a excellent cultural history. [em](Oct.) [/em]