Chinese food is one of the many analogies David Shih uses in Chinese Prodigal to examine the ever-shifting role Asian Americans occupy in this country’s racial fabric. Exotically delicious, revolting, and threatening at different times and sometimes all at once, the status of Chinese cuisine in the contemporary American imagination often mirrors mainstream attitudes toward Chinese immigrants.
The genesis of “Chinese American cuisine” itself during the early decades of the 20th century is directly linked to the 1885 Chinese Exclusion Act, which drove Chinese immigrants into the restaurant industry as a workaround to the Act’s ban on Chinese menial laborers.
Shih skillfully intertwines this history with a narration of his immigrant father’s evolving relationship with food. His father grows to distrust the Chinese restaurants the family frequented in the past, worrying over the supposed health impacts of MSG and criticizing waitstaff for their broken English.
In addition to the pressures of a life on the road as a traveling porcelain salesman in the South, Shih’s father eventually forsakes family meals and Chinese cuisine entirely, opting for solitary fast-food dinners. This change in habit, spurred both by internalized racism and the realities of working life in America directly impacted his father’s health. The onset of diabetes during this period ultimately contributes to his death.
At its core, Chinese Prodigal is David Shih’s attempt to reconcile his interpersonal relationships and self-concept against the backdrop of “Asian America” and its place in broader American race relations. Each essay sees Shih weave his personal experiences into a broader history, giving the reader vivid pieces of his own story as a prism to view the last half century of the Asian American experience.
This includes accounts of Shih raising his mixed-race son amid navigating strict American racial categories, his entry into the world of Asian…
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