Asian Panethnicity in North America: How Pan-Asian Grocery Stores and Food Blogs Build Pan-Asian Culture

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Nicole Aubin

• Living in highly globalized societies, it is becoming popular for individuals to form
  relationships and affinities with external sources of culture that are not from their own biological
  ethnicity, which troubles traditional definitions of identity. The concept of panethnicity, where
  various distinct ethnicities coalesce under a broader ethnic grouping based on common
  experiences, shared interests, and/or political factors, becomes increasingly relevant to
  discussions of identity and culture. This essay examines how Asian panethnicity in North
  America is negotiated and reflected through Asian food culture. Specifically, it explores how
  physical and digital sites of Asian panethnicity grounded in food, namely Asian grocery stores
  and Asian food social media blogging, promote a distinct panethnic Asian culture and identity in
  North America. Through analysis of these spaces and the people behind them, combined with a
  literary analysis of the autobiography Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner, this essay also
  explores how Asian Americans and Asian Canadians engage and identify with panethnic Asian
  culture.

• Date created

  2022-12-22

• Subjects / Keywords

  • “panethnic,” “panethnicity,” “Asian panethnicity,” “Asian food,” “Asian cuisine,” “food blogs,” “food social media,” “Asian grocery stores,” “Asian supermarkets,” “cultural hybridity,”
  • No, but focuses on media and literature from the 2010s-present
  • No

• Type of Item

  Research Material

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-en3z-tx24

• License

  Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International