2626 Summer Reading at the Lake

Yes, I'm working my way through "A Companion to American Immigration," which is proving to be much more interesting than the title might suggest. It says a lot about the state of present scholarship on the topic.

For instance--the list of contributors. It is heavily weighted not only with Asian surnames, but also specialists and historians on Asian immigration. In fact, I didn't find any ethnic names for Cuba, Mexico or South America, although there are two Spaniards from the University Autonoma of Barcelona. It strikes me that if it is awkward or slippery to compare the culture of Mexican illegals with that of 18th century British, it probably doesn't make a lot of sense to use the 19th century Chinese railway workers either.

Chapter 21 on food is interesting, not only for the history of food exchanges, but the obligatory use of inflammatory language which populates "survey and studies" scholarship. When European ethic groups in the U.S. are mentioned, the verb of choice is "invade," but when Plains Indians do it to each other's territory, it is a "raid."

And you can almost hear the authoress sigh when she recounts how our fore mothers raised, processed and preserved much of their own monotonous food. I just love it when academics who have probably never broken up a clod of prairie or snapped a bean, can get so sentimental about the back breaking work women used to do over an open fireplace or cook stove.