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Editorial Note

2024; Polish American Historical Association; Volume: 81; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5406/23300833.81.1.01

2330-0833

Anna D. Jaroszyńska-Kirchmann,

Culinary Culture and Tourism

This special issue of Polish American Studies aims to explore Polish American foodways. Although food studies as a research area has attracted a lot of attention from scholars and students, American Polonia's food history has thus far been acutely underexplored. In this volume, scholars from such disciplines as ethnography, cultural studies, folklore, nutrition studies, and history highlight their research into the foodways of the Polish diaspora, bringing to the table, if you may, diverse methodologies and interests.The forum presents two essays. In the first one, Annie Hauck reflects on her groundbreaking research on Polish American foodways, which she conducted in New York City in the 1980s. One of the results of that research became an innovative approach to understanding the communicative qualities of food, termed by her a Food Voice. In the second essay, Eve Jochnowitz demonstrates how the Food Voice concept can be applied to her research into the vegetarian cookbook author Fania Lewando. Lewando's cookbook, published in Yiddish in Vilnus in 1938, is an important reminder about how diverse and interesting the cuisines in the Polish lands were and how we should listen to a broad variety of Food Voices. Hauck and Jochnowitz, together with the authors of the next two articles, Gretchen Kurtz and Anna D. Jaroszyńska-Kirchmann, all participated in a panel on the Polish American Food Voice at the May 2023 annual conference of the Association for the Study of Food and Society.Gretchen Kurtz contributes an autobiographical exploration of Christmas Rocks, special occasion cookies served at Wigilia, which carry unique meaning to different generations of her Polish American family. Kurtz concludes that although the cookies in question have contested ethnic origins, they continue to carry ethnic significance and speak with a clear Food Voice. Anna D. Jaroszyńska-Kirchmann focuses on the performative aspects of collective pierogi making in Polonia, a tradition that brings together different genders and generations of Polish Americans. Joshua Blank broadens the food lens to include Polish delis in Canada. A ubiquitous presence in the Polish diaspora, the delis are more than shopping destinations; they are also gathering places for the broader ethnic community and crucial sites of memory.In Varia, Stephen Leahy visits Harbin, China, a site that witnessed the creation and disintegration of the Polish diaspora community there. Reviews of books authored by Richard C. Lukas and Thomas Hollowak as well as of A Pictorial History of Black Rock, Buffalo, New York complete this issue of the journal.