Hungering For America
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Hungering For America
$5.00
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Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration is a 2001 history book by Hasia R. Diner, published by Harvard University Press. It examines how Italian, Irish, and Eastern European Jewish immigrants (1880–1920) experienced American food abundance and used food to shape their ethnic identities in the New World.
Key points:
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Italians transformed elite and sacred-day foods into a generic "Italian" cuisine that built community pride and cohesion.
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Irish, loath to mimic Protestant British foodways, deliberately downplayed food as an ethnic marker (alcohol filled that role instead).
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East European Jews, who centered family and religious life on food, found dietary restrictions clashed with America's abundance.
The 320-page book, based on memoirs, cookbooks, newspapers, and demographic surveys, argues that "memories of hunger" and American plenty fused to cement ethnic identity and community.