Abstract
Studying nineteenth century immigrant Chinese communities in the U.S. West presents persistent challenges. Chinese-authored sources are rare, and racist U.S. record-keepers silenced Chinese voices. Alternatively, Chinese spatial practices offer evidence of agency, activism, and creativity that contested marginalization and exclusion. Immigrant Chinese in Merced, California developed communal gardens that facilitated food procurement, religious practices, transnational community formation, and economic survival. A deep reading of these gardens—detailed in Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps and newspaper reporting—shows consistent efforts to territorialize the space of the ethnic enclave not as disambiguated private property but as a collective communal resource: a Chinese place anchored in collectively worked soil. I explore these Chinese gardens in three interconnected areas. First, a focus on foodways, or the production, consumption, distribution, and labor of food and food goods, considers the gardens themselves, the work they required, and how the nature of that work sustained a transnational community for which food was not only sustenance but essential to religious practice. Second, I discuss the ways that joining together to farm and build community required innovations in the definition of community and social formation, contributing to the development of a specific American Chinese community. Finally, the food produced in the communal gardens offered material sustenance to the community and fostered economic opportunities. In making the spaces of these gardens their own, Merced’s Chinese preserved their gastronomic heritage, built and sustained community, forged a new Chinese American identity, and created places of their own in an otherwise hostile landscape.
Presenters
David RouffAssociate Professor and Chair, Department of History and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, University of California, Merced, California, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Cuisines, Self-Sufficiency, Local Foods, Place, Community, Gastronomic Heritage, Foodways, Gardens
Digital Media
This presenter hasn’t added media.
Request media and follow this presentation.
