ABSTRACT
This volume contains an entire section on Asian American food ways, or food culture, not only to help explicate the countless literary scenes involving the culture’s food ways, but because in American literature, as in American life, food is not only bodily sustenance but an important component of ethnic identity. Jessica Hagedorn titles her novel about the Philippines Dogeaters. One of the first Asian American magazines of the 1980s called itself Rice. We have no difficulty understanding that identity, not nutrition, is at stake.
