Twelfth International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

What role does food play in the relationship of a regional diaspora that is spread across an international border? That food is crucial to the identity of migrant groups, maintaining a connection with the past/homeland, is clear, but how is this culinary nationalism transformed in the liminal space of the borderland, when members of the diaspora are closely related but living in two different countries? The two case studies being compared in this talk, the foodways of the tightly, daily connected communities of the Arab Diaspora across the Detroit River, in Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan, is contrasted to the more distantly separated families of the Chinese diaspora in Vancouver and Seattle. Both situations involve a diasporic ‘homeland’: Detroit as the home of the largest community of Arab-Americans, which results in an almost ‘terroir-like’ praise for pita and baklava made in that city, while some Chinese-Americans in Seattle claim that Vancouver possesses the best Chinese food ‘in the world,’ worthy of special long distance visits when relatives are visiting from China. The foodways of both communities are explored, especially the role the border has played, and continues to play, in the lives of these American and Canadian borderlanders.