Mint Grows Through the Cracks in the Foundation: Food Practices of the Assimilated Lebanese Diaspora in New England (USA).

With an ethnographic focus on descendants of Lebanese migrants in the U.S.A., this paper examines what ethnic foods means for people who consider themselves to be “assimilated” into the American white, middle-class mainstream, and who are eager to remain accepted as unhyphenated Americans, as neither Lebanese-American nor Arab-American. The paper traces their food practices and analyzes how they use food within kinship networks to honour ancestors, communicate, and generate bonds between people of Lebanese ancestry. It illustrates how preparation and consumption of “Lebanese” cuisine has become embedded in social practices of these residents of small towns across rural New England. The findings presented in the paper provide an analysis of an identity practice with both a white, assimilated American aspect and a Lebanese diasporic one. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]