Flavors of Empire: Food and the Making of Thai America Volume 45

With a uniquely balanced combination of salty, sweet, sour, and spicy flavors, Thai food burst onto Los Angeles's and America's culinary scene in the 1980s. Flavors of Empire examines the rise of Thai food and the way it shaped the racial and ethnic contours of Thai American identity and community. Full of vivid oral histories and new archival material, this book explores the factors that made foodways central to the Thai American experience. Starting with American Cold War intervention in Thailand, Mark Padoongpatt traces how informal empire allowed U.S. citizens to discover Thai cuisine abroad and introduce it inside the United States. When Thais arrived in Los Angeles, they reinvented and repackaged Thai food in various ways to meet the rising popularity of the cuisine in urban and suburban spaces. Padoongpatt opens up the history and politics of Thai food for the first time, all while demonstrating how race emerges in seemingly mundane and unexpected places.

Author: Mark Padoongpatt
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 09/19/2017
Pages: 272
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.80lbs
Size: 8.90h x 5.90w x 0.70d
ISBN13: 9780520293748
ISBN10: 0520293746
BISAC Categories:
- History | United States | State & Local | General
- Cooking | History
- Cooking | Regional & Ethnic | Asian

About the Author
Mark Padoongpatt is Assistant Professor of Asian and Asian American Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.