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UC Santa Cruz UC Santa Cruz Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Making to Taste: Culinary Experimentalism in Asian Pacific American Culture Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/97j698rf Author Chan, Stephanie H. Publication Date 2014 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ MAKING TO TASTE: CULINARY EXPERIMENTALISM IN ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICAN CULTURE A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in LITERATURE by Stephanie H. Chan September 2014 The Dissertation of Stephanie H. Chan is approved: ___________________________________ Professor Rob Wilson, chair ___________________________________ Professor Christine Hong ___________________________________ Professor Karen Tei Yamashita ___________________________________ Professor Chris Connery ___________________________ Tyrus Miller Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Copyright © by Stephanie H. Chan 2014 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………….iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…..…………………………………………………………...vi INTRODUCTION………………………………..……………………………………….1 I. PAPERS AND PROVISIONS: CULINARY REVISION IN SAN FRANCISCO CHINATOWN NARRATIVES………………………………………………........25 “Fry Me to the Moon”: Wayne Wang’s Early Chinatown Films……….....34 Forging Papers, Foraging for Family: San Francisco Chinatown Narratives at Mid-Century……..…………………………………………………........45 Eating Secrets: Steer Toward Rock……….……………………...………...52 Eat Everything Before You Die: an Indigestible Assimilation…………….62 II. FEEDING THE REVOLUTION: COOKS IN THE BOOK OF SALT AND I HOTEL……..82 Master Chef and Kitchen Boy……………………………………...……....86 California Dream Cuisine………………………………………………...100 III. OUT OF THE ARMCHAIR: WANDERING ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICAN EATERS AND FAILED SATIATION…………………………………………………..……….125 Consuming the Conceptual in Pamela………………………...............….130 “Refusing Food”: The Search for Food Habit in The Fifth Book of Peace ………………………………………………………………………….....137 An Island of Strangers: “Hawaiian Cowboys”…………………..……….146 CODA Re-localizing with Race: Imagining Alternative Consumption..………....161 Next Courses……………….……………………………………………..185 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………...193 iii ABSTRACT MAKING TO TASTE: CULINARY EXPERIMENTALISM IN ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICAN CULTURE by Stephanie H. Chan This project studies works by Asian Pacific American writers and artists that respond critically to the widespread enthusiasm for ethnic food and multiculturalism which arose in the United States during the late-twentieth century. This enthusiasm reflected popular hope that food culture’s welcoming of ethnic cuisine was a sign of racism receding into the past. Yet consuming palatable ethnic food representations as a surrogate for racialized bodies encourages the disavowal of past inequities’ pressure on the present, and disassociation from unsavory racist histories of exclusion, labor exploitation, and biopolitical regulation established in the decades preceding. Observing how celebratory discourses of liberal multiculturalism and world citizenship invoke appreciation of ethnic cuisine while obscuring structural inequities still embedded in food culture, this project demonstrates ways in which Asian food remains tethered to histories of inequity that have not been overcome. To illuminate these inequities, this study considers how contemporary artists expose what becomes elided in multicultural consumptions of difference, namely, congealed labor, unequal exchange, and circuits of domination. Central to the study iv are the works’ “culinary experimentalism” – literary tactics of representing food, designed to re-engage race by conjuring obscured histories of Asian exclusion, and by challenging Asian food’s exemplarity as a deracialized signifier of multiculturalism and globalization. Using parody, mixed languages, and imaginative re-telling of neglected histories, these works refigure food representations to assert political linkages disappeared during the rise of culinary multiculturalism, and to suggest more race-conscious forms of consumption. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS “Pop!” was the theme of the first conference held by UC Santa Cruz’s Asia Pacific American Research Cluster, a vivacious group of graduate scholars dedicated to exploring transpacific cultural linkages. My first experience giving a scholarly paper at this gathering, focused on popular culture, was so enervating that it set me on the path to earning a doctorate, and completing this dissertation. This resolve gelled after meeting Rob Wilson, who offered me a chocolate Milano as the proceedings ran over, and who, not long after suggesting Gramsci would bolster my study of Asian American chick-lit, became my adviser. Rob has nurtured my intellectual growth throughout, welcoming my questions and scattered bunches of half-baked leads, and teaching me how to trust my strengths. His courses on global-local poetics routed across the Pacific, and on the pastoral, inspired many of the readings within these pages. I am grateful for his scholarly works which model deep concern and compassion for the mixed and marginalized, and for his wry, spry, poems which issue from the self-conscious and courageous heart. Thanks to his epigram jukebox, his aloha beat generosity, his poetic manna and hilarity, we have made it. Christine Hong’s presence kept me from the deep end of second thought, and the throes of academic protocol, as I crafted this project. Her keen eye and fierceness as a critic imbued this work with a level of rigor beyond what I could have imagined on my own. I continue to draw inspiration by observing her inexhaustible dedication as a scholar, activist, and educator. Christine’s graduate seminar on Asian Americans vi and the Law was generative for my study of Chinatown narratives. Her dissertation writing group has also been a valuable space for developing ideas. I relied on her mentorship as I faced increasingly heavy teaching loads, and contributed to other projects, while building this dissertation. I thank her for her faith, her excitement for this work, and for being welcomed under her wing at several eleventh hours. It has been my privilege to have Karen Tei Yamashita as a committee member in this endeavor, and an even bigger privilege to have been in her presence these years. Her works and teachings in Asian American literature offered light and provocative questions as I shaped this study to highlight innovative approaches to history and language. Many thanks go to Karen for puzzling through these ideas with me, for her mentorship in creative writing, for mind-body nourishment (including adobo, Iron Chef battle reading panels, and preserved Meyer lemons), and for being the cook behind Felix. The food focus of this project owes to Chris Connery and his graduate seminar on The Ocean. Chris’s courses on Chinese history and literature also deepened my understanding of diasporic culture, and at his encouragement I embarked on Mandarin language study in both Santa Cruz and Nanjing, China, which enabled my readings of hybrid-language texts. One of the most serious gourmets and thinkers I know, Chris has been a crucial champion and collaborator. Several other teachers and allies at UC Santa offered me encouragement, and welcomed me in the spirit of community: I thank them all. Special appreciation must go to Lissa Caldwell, for inviting me to participate in the multi-campus groups vii focused on food, the body, and work, as well as to make editorial contributions to Gastronomica; and to Jim Clifford, who sat on my qualifying exam committee and was an important catalyst for my work in cultural studies. For teaching me, and for guiding my own development as an educator, I am grateful to Micah Perks, Lisa Rofel, Susan Gillman, Kirsten Silva-Gruesz, Vilashini Cooppan, Sharon Kinoshita, Jody Greene, and David Keenan. Julie Kimball’s teachings trained me to pay attention to micro-movements and to my big toe, which in turn deepened this project’s attention to play and experiment. I would not have gone past the first day were it not for Carol Stoneburner, Emily Gregg, Hollie Clausnitzer, Amy Tessier, Roxanne Monnet, Stephanie Casher, Julie Brower, and Sandra Yates. Warmest thanks to them for their kindness and expertise in keeping us all glued together. My graduate compatriots and friends at UC Santa Cruz cared for me with the utmost generosity and faith throughout this endeavor. They read drafts, responded, offered support through exams and writing phases, listened to teaching challenges, shared stories and food. I am privileged to have spent this time learning and working alongside them. In particular, PacRum, including Fritzie de Mata, Tim Yamamura, and Melissa Poulsen, has been an incredible buoy, a pod of powerful minds and local players, with whom I have grown at home. In moments of compression, and in moments of celebration, they have been with me, always offering fellowship, and fuel to weather The Wall in its various forms. The Snickers-SPAM imaginary continues. I am glad for Troy Crowder, whose expansive knowledge of world history, popular culture, and transcendent cuisines I have long enjoyed and admired. His presence viii brought the times great lightness. Calvin McMillin, Jimi Valiente-Neighbours, Shelly Chan, Surya Parekh, Christy Lupo, Jasmine Syedullah, and Sherwin Mendoza, gave this journey special lift and gravitas. The Literature Department, Graduate Division, and Graduate Student