Eating Chinese culture on the menu in small town Canada

Cho, Lily 1975- (Author).

Summary: "Chicken fried rice, sweet and sour pork, and an order of onion rings, please." Chinese restaurants in small town Canada are at once everywhere - you would be hard pressed to find a town without a Chinese restaurant - and yet they are conspicuously absent in critical discussions of Chinese diasporic culture or even in popular writing about Chinese food. In Eating Chinese, Lily Cho examines Chinese restaurants as spaces that define, for those both inside and outside the community, what it means to be Chinese and what it means to be Chinese-Canadian. Despite restrictions on immigration and explicitly racist legislation at national and provincial levels, Chinese immigrants have long dominated the restaurant industry in Canada. While isolated by racism, Chinese communities in Canada were still strongly connected to their non-Chinese neighbours through the food that they prepared and served. Cho looks at this surprisingly ubiquitous feature of small-town Canada through menus, literature, art, and music. An innovative approach to the study of diaspora, Eating Chinese brings to light the cultural spaces crafted by restaurateurs, diners, cooks, servers, and artists.

Record details

ISBN: 1442610409
ISBN: 9781442610408
ISBN: 1442641053
ISBN: 9781442641051
ISBN: 1442686472 (electronic bk.)
ISBN: 9781442686472 (electronic bk.)
Physical Description: 1 online resource (x, 207 p.) : ill.
remote
electronic resource
Publisher: Toronto ; Buffalo : University of Toronto Press, c2010.

Content descriptions

General Note:	Multi-User.
Bibliography, etc. Note:	Includes bibliographical references (p. [189]-201) and index.
Formatted Contents Note:	Sweet and sour : historical presence and diasporic agency -- On the menu : time and Chinese restaurant counterculture -- Disappearing Chinese café : white nostalgia and the public sphere -- Diasporic counterpublics : the Chinese restaurant as institution and installation -- "How taste remembers life" : diaspora and the memories that bind.
Terms Governing Use and Reproduction Note:	Access requires VIU IP addresses and is restricted to VIU students, faculty and staff.
Source of Description Note:	Description based on print version record.