A wonderful cookbook that's easy to follow, fun to cook, and a blast to peruse. The photos are gorgeous, the recipes are great, and the culture is encompassing. A great tool for any kitchen!

Thank you to NetGalley for the eARC copy of this book.
I enjoyed reading each of these stories about Asian food history. Each story was very insightful and eye opening.

I think the cover is misleading, as it appears to be a cookbook or a lighthearted book about Boba. However, this is a collection of scholarly essays, well-researched and densely packed with history, ethnography, food culture, and geopolitics. It is not a casual read, but it is a very interesting read for anyone who is interested in food as a cultural study.

I hate to admit it… but to some degree I do judge a book by its cover. Usually the meaning in that phrase is to say that a lacklustre cover could hold an amazing story within. Unfortunately, I found the opposite to be true with this book. I love learning but I was thrown off by the academic format of this book based on the colourful fun cover - something you would expect to see on a cookbook.
While this book is very knowledgeable (there must be a million references cited) it is nothing like you may expect based on the cover. For me - this time around that didn’t serve me well as I wouldn’t pick such a dry sort of academic reading style to learn more about Asian food, however I would be inclined to read much of the same information in a different format - something more similar to what you would expect based on the cover.. perhaps with some recipes.

I could not take this nonfiction seriously at all. Are you a research paper or an opinionated expose? Either be on or the other not both, it ruins your credibility.

Eating More Asian America is a deeply researched collection of essays on Asian American identity through food. It explores diaspora, racism, and cultural transformation, covering topics like phở in the U.S., boba culture, and food safety biases. The book’s academic style, with citations and footnotes, makes it valuable for scholars but may feel dense for general readers. A glossary would have improved accessibility. Despite this, its critical analysis and firsthand perspectives offer powerful insights. It challenges readers to rethink food justice, authenticity, and heritage. A must-read for those interested in Asian American studies and food politics.

Really beautiful premise with great approaches through essay. I loved all the different perspectives

After living in the United States for a while and experiencing firsthand the incredible melting pot of cultures, it was only natural that I would be drawn to a book about Asian American food and culture. As someone who enjoys reading non-fiction—though I don’t always have the time for it—this book was a true breath of fresh air. Whenever I can carve out time for a thoughtful read, I always gravitate toward topics that explore culture and history, as they offer such valuable insight into the world around us. And food, as this book brilliantly demonstrates, is a wonderful lens through which we can connect with different cultures. You don’t need to speak the language or know all the history behind a dish—you simply need to open your mind (and your mouth) to the experience.

What I found so refreshing about this book is how it weaves together both the influence of Asian food on American cuisine and the ways in which American culture has shaped the evolution of Asian food in the U.S. The historical anecdotes and context sprinkled throughout the chapters provide a rich, textured understanding of how Asian American culture has developed over time. I deeply enjoyed the way the book discusses deeper, complex issues like racism, politics, and discrimination. The authors don’t just present academic perspectives but also bring in real-life examples to ground their points, making the read both thought-provoking and approachable.

The illustrations that accompany the text add an extra layer of depth, visually illustrating the cultural landscape the authors are describing. As a reader, you’re not just absorbing information but also being immersed in the stories of food, people, and history. It's a vivid portrayal of the rich diversity of contemporary America, a place where the boundaries of culture, ethnicity, and identity continuously intersect.

As an Asian adoptee myself, some of the chapters felt deeply personal, and I found myself relating to the narratives in ways I hadn’t expected, especially Chapters 2 and 18. My favorite chapters were: Bumbay Bibingka (Chapter 1), Garlic, Kimchi, and Other Banchan (Chapter 2), I Love Pho (Chapter 3), Shrimp Wars (Chapter 11), and A Taste of Transpacific History (Chapter 18). These sections do more than just explore food; they tell stories about belonging, identity, and the way food shapes our connections to heritage. They give contextualized historical events through the lens of food, giving me a deeper understanding of the transpacific connections that have shaped modern American food culture.

Overall, this book by far exceeded my expectations. It is a beautifully crafted exploration of Asian American food and culture, and it does an excellent job of highlighting the complexities of both the history and contemporary issues faced by Asian Americans. Whether you're a food enthusiast, someone curious about Asian American culture, or simply looking for a compelling read that dives into culture, politics, and identity, I highly recommend this book. It’s an enriching and personal journey that will leave you with a greater appreciation for the diverse flavors and stories that make up the American culinary landscape.

"Absolutely love love loved this! As someone who eats a LOT of Asian American food and does a lot of Asian American cooking, it was so interesting to learn more about the background of many of the dishes, practices, and eras of Asian American eating (loved reading about 'Generation Boba'), and the mixing of cultures that create what we know as Asian American cuisine today. It made me want to dive into the genre of food history and encouraged me to think more about what I'm eating (and be more cognizant of historical and cultural influences overall). I have so many friends that would love this, and will definitely be recommending it to them! I didn't realize there was a first volume, so may go and check that out as well.
Sincere thanks to NetGalley and NYU Press for the opportunity to read this reader!"

Eating More Asian America
Authors: Robert Ji-Song Ku, Martin F. Manalansan and Anita Mannur
⭐️⭐️

I did not finish this book. The essays were very dry and read like academic papers or a textbook.

Thanks to NetGalley and NYU Press for an advanced copy of the book. All thoughts in this review are my own.

A really interesting read. As a white person, I often take for granted how much Asian cuisine and culinary cultures have influenced North American cuisine. It was really fascinating to explore that and I really enjoyed the way the authors structured this book. I did find the writing to be a little wordy and overly-detailed at some points, but overall if you are someone interested in how asian american cuisine has shaped north american/western food cultures, you will likely enjoy this.

EATING MORE ASIAN AMERICAN is a rich collection of academic articles about Asian cuisine, culture, and the experience of belonging to a group of people who identify as immigrants, whether first or consequential generations.

I was really surprised at how raw a few of the essays were, touching on the topics of xenophobia, staying in touch with roots, and the need to grow as a part and apart from family. Having all this relate to food felt like such a comfortable way to engage with this dialogue and it often felt like a conversation that happened around a table, enjoying a meal. It gave me such an insight into topics that I have never encountered and really makes me think about the long history that is behind the dishes I love.

I do think that the high level of academic language and attention will be difficult for many people, which is a giant disservice to the book itself. It's importance and significance of what is written about is a topic that everyone should be exposed to.

Growing up, a lot of us Asian Americans have had to deal with judgment/microaggressions from our peers about how Asian food is smelly, unhealthy, or unsanitary. How different things are now, especially seeing how Asian food and ingredients are trendy now (ube and matcha anyone?).

Eating More Asian Americacan be summarized as a series of academic publications about Asian American food under the lens of diaspora, immigration, racism, colonization, identity, social perception, and heritage. Asian American identity is irrevocably tied to food. This book also propels Asian American perspectives to the forefront, as many big names in the food world are Asian chef and food writers advocating for their cuisine (rather than a non-Asian person), as a result of Asian food becoming more visible and mainstream.

I appreciate how well-researched this is and the authors of each essay intimately understands the food culture that they write about, which brings more cultural sensitivity, critical analysis, and deep knowledge - there is a lot of inclusivity and education here! Also it’s pretty neat to see a lot of my old haunts or travel experiences I have had are also a part of academia.

Some favorite essays:
* “I Love Phở” speaks to the influence of Vietnamese refugees in Little Saigon, OC and the Midwest and how they brought their own version of phở to the US.
* “Boba Generation” highlights the explosion of popularity of boba against the backdrop of the 626 or SGV area, how boba plays a part in social activist movements, and even mentions the boba shortage during the early days of COVID-19
* “Dirty Dining? The Chinese Roast Bill, Food, and Public Health” hits back at how traditionally prepared Asian food is often seen as unsanitary not just from the Western opinion but also built into food safety policy, like food holding temperature requirements. What is amazing is that they had scientists assess roasted peking ducks in a lab to prove that it was not harboring dangerous levels of bacteria.
* “Food Justice and Urban Change” demonstrates how xenophobia and racism against Asian Americans were exacerbated during COVID-19.
* “Shrimp Wars” speaks about the struggles of Vietnamese immigrant shrimpers in Texas, their conflicts with the KKK in the ensuing legal battle, and their challenges with the BP oil spill and pollution in the Gulf Coast

And more…many of the essays touch on the term “authenticity” needs to account for how much Asian food has to transform over time, due to ingredients availability, environmental factors, food sovereignty, etc.

What I didn’t expect was how scholarly this book would be, which I think is a disconnect between the synopsis and expectations - it reads more like college course material or literary journal publications - complete with numerous footnotes and citations - when I was just expecting a series of either non-academic journal articles (in the style of science magazines, for instance) or personal stories. This is okay for me as I work in scientific research and regularly digest publications like the ones in this book and actually really enjoyed most of them, but it was not what I expected.

I also would’ve appreciated a glossary intro to common niche terms used throughout the essays, like “foodways” or “food sovereignty.” There’s an incredible wealth of information, analysis and research based on lived experience, so I can see this being an important resource for future generations and scholars.

Thank you to NYU Press and NetGalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are independently my own.

There is a lot of information packed into these essays about Asian food, culture, and the diversity of both. I found a lot of it fascinating but incredibly dry. This is definitely a more scholarly work, likely to be found in a scholarly journal than more mainstream publications, and I learned a lot about the origins of dishes and the spread of these dishes to other areas. I had hoped for a more personal look, with the writer connecting with both their subject and the reader.

I am sorry, but I dnf the book. Was not what I expected, couldn't keep my attention . As I am not very experienced whit Asin culture, some parts where confusing for me.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for letting me review this book. I enjoyed reading about Asian food history and how it has impacted the US.

I did appreciate learning more about the history and injustices faced. It’s always good to get another perspective from other cultures. Thank you for the advanced copy!

This was an interesting book, but I had a little trouble following the direction of some of the essays, and the way they were meant to be structured. I appreciate the sources after each chapter! Still, I would recommend this to people in academia, but maybe not for casual readers.

Non-fiction November

Part I: Gastronomic Sites

1. "Bumbay" Bibingka: Culinary Crosscurrents between India and the Philippines ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

For a book about food, we get hot and heavy into politics and colonization real fast. I love it. What is food, if not politics? Who determines what is authentic? What is fusion?

Bibingka is quintessentially Filipino. But if we explore its backstory a bit more, we see it is made with very Indian ingredients. The Philippines and India were colonized by vastly different empires. How did this food come to be?

📖 Arsenic and Adobo

📺 Street Food: Asia

🎵 Ruby Ibarra

🥡 Lasita

2. Garlic, Kimchi, and Other Banchan: The Intimacies of Food in the Lives of Adopted Koreans ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Did I just cut an onion? I teared up a bit...

Diaspora kids have it hard. Adoptees have it harder. I, as a Vietnamese American that understand the language better than I speak it, find it comforting to connect to my culture through food. These Korean American adoptees are often adopted as babies into white families. They do not grow up with food. What, then, does food mean to them?

📖 Crying in H Mart

📺 Taste the Nation

🥡 Han Bat Sul Lung Tang

3. I Love Phở: Entrepreneurship and Ethnicity in the American Heartland ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

I will never live somewhere without decent Asian food. LA is already a struggle, because the nearest good Vietnamese food is in OC. I know it doesn't look far on a map, but traffic is a bitch.

I don't want to get into the habit of saying never this, never that, but I will never live in the Midwest. The region horrifies me with its lack of diversity, and as such, lack of good Asian food. And yet so many of my people, and so many others, call this place home. They open restaurants that cater to vast audiences, but again, what is authenticity?

People fight over Northern and Southern phở. I'm in the Northern camp. But it was apparently in the American Heartland that short rib phở was invented, a dish I've seen both in Houston and OC. And isn't that funny?

📖 A Pho Love Story

🎥 Peach Blossom, Phở and Piano

📺 The Sympathizer

🥡 The Paper Bridge

4. Generation Boba ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Is boba the great unifier between Asian Americans? Who does this include? East Asians? Southeast Asians? South Asians?

I don't really want to talk about boba liberalism, so I won't.

Know that I love and enjoy that SGV is a safe space to be Asian American. Great place for food. I will not willingly take the 10 east on a weekday. Maybe even the weekend. Laugh.

And while Americans of all sorts love boba, and other Asian food, Asian Americans were still violently murdered in the midst of COVID-19.

📺 Parts Unknown

🍵 CHICHA San Chen

Part II: Food Politics

5. Dirty Dining? The Chinese Roast Duck Bill, Food, and Public Health in Asian America ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I am so tired of hearing about Chinese Restaurant Syndrome. White people eat plenty of MSG in every other disgusting food they consume. That should also make you tired.

I found the Roast Duck Bill interesting. Just because something doesn't meet western cooking standards doesn't mean it's wrong. I haven't heard about a roast duck killing anybody. Don't like it? Don't eat it.

📖 Invitation to a Banquet

📺 The Search for General Tso

🥡 Mein

6. Foraging for New Futurities: Studying Mess and Food Sovereignty in Conversation with Asian American Food Politics ⭐⭐

I'm sorry. This one was a little boring.

However, it did interest me when settler colonialism was mentioned, and not just in regards to white people. Asian Americans took over Hawai'i, and this isn't talked about enough.

🥡 8oz Poke

7. Food Justice and Urban Change in a Historic Chinese Neighborhood in the Time of COVID ⭐⭐⭐

Even more about Chinese Restaurant Syndrome and how people stopped eating Chinese food during the pandemic. And yet, when Italy's cases soared through the roof, no one stopped eating pasta. Curious. And racist.

8. Upscaling Authenticity: Asian American Food Gentrification in Chinatown ⭐⭐⭐

Look, I adore Roy Choi, but he definitely had something to do with the gentrification of LA Chinatown. The Chinese left Chinatown years ago. They're out in SGV.

But if you roam the old neighborhood, you'll still see the remnants of the people that grew up there, that are just trying to live out their last years in peace. Roy, along with some other young Asian American chefs, drove a lot of them out. And post-pandemic, Chinatown is unfortunately very dead. Lasita, which I love, but is definitely gentrified, is the only restaurant open late.

📖 On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family

🎥 Days of Being Wild

🥡 Mỹ Dung Sandwich Shop

Part III: Alimentary Struggles

9. "Yellow Fever" at Whole Foods: Curating (White) American Palates ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I am very amused by an Asian American woman running a fast casual restaurant called Yellow Fever, but I can see why this didn't work for white people at Whole Foods.

📖 Yellowface

10. Becoming Meat: Queer Intimacies between Dogs and Asians ⭐⭐⭐⭐

This country is embarrassing. Dogs are treated better than people.

In other countries, dogs aren't just pets. They are animals. Whether you agree with it or not, that makes them a viable food option. I have a former friend who went on a boohoo journey to save the dogs in China and South Korea. I did not donate. It is none of our business what other people do or eat. Mind your own business.

📖 Slow Noodles

11. Shrimp Wars: The Trials and Triumphs of Vietnamese American Shrimpers of the Gulf Coast ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

As a Vietnamese American that grew up in Houston, I knew stupid little about the Seadrift fishermen's struggles with the KKK. While I learned some in Carolyn's new book, linked below, Dr. Ha's essay brings new light and facts.

📖 The Family Recipe

🥡 Crawfish & Noodles

12. Canned Food Carcerality: Prisoner and Refugee Foodways and Memories of Camp ⭐⭐⭐

Being Japanese and Vietnamese is an interesting mix. I was about to say it's not one I've encountered before, but I lied. My cousin's kids are this mix. Oops.

Anyway, as both Japanese Americans and Vietnamese Americans have survived war and war camps, what else do they have in common? Food is so prevalent across both cultures, that to withhold certain foods, is almost to withhold life. This isn't dramatic.

📖 We Are Not Free

Part IV: Gustatory Intimacies

13. Debt Forgiveness: Reflections of a Farmer's Daughter ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I didn't realize how many language intricacies could be involved in farming, although it makes sense given the nature of any business. Minari was my introduction to this, and chicken sexing, which I never want to think about again. Food production is horrific.

📖 The Last Story of Mina Lee

🎥 Minari

14. Feeding the Dead: On Atang and Pitik ⭐⭐⭐

Ancestor altars are very Asian. I want to say they pre-date colonial religion, but I have no idea. Filipinos are, for the most part, Catholic. And yet they hold to these altars just like Buddhist and Shinto Asians. Sounds like the Catholic Church had to change in order to keep some of their converts. Sucks. Change some more.

📖 Saints of Storm and Sorrow

📺 Take Out

15. Eating Ancestrally: Resisting with and Learning from Our Families' Foodways ⭐⭐⭐

I imagine being a white-passing mixed kid is hard. But, I imagine, so is the reverse. I found it hard enough to connect with my heritage when both parents are of the same background.

I don't know many Sikhs, but those I do know are proud. Post-9/11, there was so much racism against them. It is generally a peaceful religion. I would say most are. The most radical people I know are Christian.

📖 The Unlikely Adventures of the Shergill Sisters

🥡 Cali Tandoor

16. Mango as Relation ⭐⭐⭐

I wasn't as into this one, but I do love a mango. As someone that has never eaten one in Southeast Asia, though, this needs to change. Who wants to go?

Part V: Culinary Texts

17. From Community Cookbooks to Online Blogs/Websites: Generational Shifts in Japanese American Foodways ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I've always loved that Japanese Americans have names for each generation that has been overseas. I don't love that I didn't know about the internment until I was an adult, but education, am I right?

Japanese cuisine is one of my favorites. I could eat it every day. This is made more difficult by my soy allergy, and there are certainly dishes I miss, e.g. miso soup.

📖 Never Been Better

🏛️ Japanese American National Museum

🥡 Izakaya Wa

🍵 Tea Master Matcha Cafe and Green Tea Shop

18. A Taste of Transpacific History: Gendering Korean Cookbooks ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Adoption is hard. Multiracial adoption across different cultures is harder. And yet, when I discovered Kimchi Chronicles, I couldn't stop watching.

📖 Tastes Like War

📺 Kimchi Chronicles

🥡 Soot Bull Jip

19. A Fork in the Road: Cosmopolitanism, Cookbooks, and Vietnamese Street Food ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I hate cultural appropriation. I make amazing Swedish meatballs, but I'm not out here writing Swedish cookbooks or starting a Swedish restaurant. Bye, Bobby Chinn.

20. Monique Truong's Familiar Tastes and Stranger Appetites ⭐⭐

This went right over my head. I did like the bits about being Vietnamese American and queer, but also in the South. I feel like that's a very particular experience.

📖 A Bánh Mì for Two

21. A Visceral Archive of Survival: Doreen Fernandez's Sarap and the "Crisis-Ethos" of Philippine Cuisine ⭐⭐⭐

I don't think people should be judging, or rather looking down upon, other people's cuisines. The fact that multiple Chinese cuisines have elevated status in the Philippines is crazy to me. Well, maybe not crazy.

📖 Chloe and the Kaishao Boys

📱 Thank you to NetGalley and NYU Press

This had some fascinating essays about race and the role it plays in cuisine in an American landscape.