Flavors of Empire

"This is not your typical book on Thai culture and cuisine, in fact, there has never been a book like this! Padoongpatt is a pioneer that's finally telling the definitive story of the history of Thai people in America. You will learn how Thai food brought us together."--Jet Tila, celebrity chef, restaurateur, and author of 101 Asian Dishes You Need to Cook Before You Die: Discover a New World of Flavors in Authentic Recipes "Employing a transnational lens, Padoongpatt dissects the Cold War racial liberalism through which Americans acquired Thai people and culture by consuming Thai food."--Madeline Y. Hsu, author of The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model Minority " Flavors of Empire makes significant, original, and generative contributions to civic life by revealing the degree to which the U.S. racial order has been shaped by the direct and collateral consequences of U.S. warfare in Asia; by the utility of race, ethnicity, and nation in producing novelty; and by the role of racialized spatial imaginaries about public and private space in global cities."--George Lipsitz, author of How Racism Takes Place