14 Dicembre 2017
A new book among the essential readings that define New York City according to Saveur magazine
American food and wine magazine Saveur listed the best 16 books (by chef, writers and scholars) that give a picture on what food is about in New York.
Among these, a very interesting work of Simone Cinotto, UNISG Associate Professor of Modern History and director of the Master of Gastronomy: Food in the World (Food Cultures and Mobility) .
"The Italian American Table: Food, Family, and Community in New York City", edited by University of Illinois Press, looks at the historic Italian American community of East Harlem in the 1920s and 30s and demonstrates how food was at the center of the lives of immigrants and their children. Cinotto argues that Italian immigrants created a distinctive culture of food as a symbolic response to the needs of immigrant life, from the struggle for personal and group identity to the pursuit of social and economic power and recasts Italian American food culture as an American "invention" resonant with traces of tradition.
At this regard, renewed author and restaurateur Lidia Bastianich says "If one wants to understand how an ethnic community can become a popular culture through food and how through food, the Italian Americans created their identity, Cinotto's book can really help”.
