Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration

by Hasia R. Diner

Book Overview

Millions of immigrants were drawn to American shores, not by the mythic streets paved with gold, but rather by its tables heaped with food. How they experienced the realities of America's abundant food--its meat and white bread, its butter and cheese, fruits and vegetables, coffee and beer--reflected their earlier deprivations and shaped their ethnic practices in the new land.

Hungering for America tells the stories of three distinctive...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674011112
• ISBN13: 9780674011113
• Release Date: April 2003
• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.12 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.9" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

The Predominant Allure of America

This is a trully intriguing work about three parallel immigrant cultures, and how hunger for an adequate diet was one of the predominant incentives to them for immigration. What makes this study so interesting is how the importance of food manifested itself so differentially among these separate groups once in the United States based upon the histories of the country of origin.Being of Irish extraction I learned for the first time, definitively, why unlike my Italian, Jewish, and Latino friends no Irish "ethnic" foods (other than soda bread) were part of my background. And, it helped me to better understand the critical, but differing, importance of food in the Jewish and Italian cultures I grew up along side.Readers should be advised that this is a serious academic work, one which would be an appropriate college history text. Therefore, the introduction and summary chapters will seem dry and..."academic" to those seeking a purely recreational read. I advise them to walk on the edge and learn something; it's well worth the time invested.