Rice: An Intercultural Dialogue on Food and Asian American Identity
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5195/pur.2026.158Abstract
Food functions as a vessel for cultural memory, resistance, and assimilation within Asian American identity formation. Through a comparative literary analysis of Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor Was Divine and Anita Felicelli’s Love Songs for a Lost Continent, this work argues that food holds a dual role in both protection and erasure of one’s heritage. Foods such as onigiri, umeboshi, and eggs show how forced assimilation during Japanese American internment weaponized food to strip individuals of identity, while uttapam and kozhukattai show more subtle, generational assimilation among Indian Americans. Cuisine works as an intercultural language connecting past, present, and future Asian American experiences. This illustrates how engagement with culinary traditions can enable resistance to cultural homogenization, and create a hybrid identity that is simultaneously Asian and American.
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