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Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 6: 75. © American Folklore Society 2018

Review of:

Flavors from Home: Refugees in Kentucky 
Share Their Stories and Comfort Foods
Aimee Zaring. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2015. Pp. 
291, appendices, bibliography, index.

By: Lucy M. Long

Personal food stories are a powerful way to explore the experience of being a 
refugee. These stories give voice to individuals who have lived through such 
circumstances and also help us understand the history—and implications—of 
cultural migrations. Aimee Zaring allows readers to hear those voices in this 
excellent collection of oral histories of 23 refugees to the United States from 
around the world over the past 50 years—and presents recipes from each 
(42 in all) for dishes that remind them of home. These selections oftentimes 
represent the best and the favorites of a food culture, but they also are comfort 
foods, evoking memories of the past while also bringing together new friends 
and communities that help to create new homes. Each chapter presents an 
individual’s life story, discusses the person’s relationships to food, and offers 
one or more recipes. Each refugee’s journey to the US and commonwealth of 
Kentucky is contextualized within broader political, economic, and cultural 
facts, offering a glimpse into how events frequently thought of as happening 
“over there” can impact the everyday lives of ordinary people. 

The recipes have been kitchen-tested, oftentimes being translated from oral 
tradition into written forms that will make sense to mainstream Americans. 
Photographs, both black and white and color, show individual cooks and dishes 
in their home contexts in Kentucky, affirming the idea that these are real 
people—not just “informants.”

Zaring is an English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) teacher and writer 
in Louisville, Kentucky, where she has worked with students from numerous 
cultures. For this book, she started with individuals she knew, but also sought 
out others around Kentucky in order to try to capture a broader swath of the 
diversity now found in that state. She does not attempt to be comprehensive, 



Long, Lucy M. 2017. Review of Flavors From Home. 
Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 6: 76. © American Folklore Society 2018

but is offering a taste of this more multicultural society than in usually thought 
of as representing Kentucky. As such, she challenges some notions of what it 
means to be an American and who can claim that identity. Zaring also points 
out that the book focuses on refugees—individuals forced to flee their homeland 
for their own physical safety. She observes that they differ from immigrants 
who come to the US for other reasons, such as economic or educational 
opportunities. Material goods frequently could not be brought, so cooking 
skills and remembered recipes serve as highly-valued souvenirs of the past. 
Recreating them in new contexts then becomes a tangible way simultaneously 
to re-enact heritage and negotiate new identities. 

This book was sponsored partly by faith-based nonprofits providing assistance 
to refugees (Catholic Charities and Kentucky Refugee Ministries), and some 
of the proceeds return to those organizations. While it does not address 
scholarship on foodways, tradition, ethnicity, or other pertinent areas, its 
approach will resonate with many folklorists. Perhaps more significantly, it 
offers refugees a chance to document and share the multiple ways in which 
food has served them, and it introduces general readers and cooks to the 
idea that there can be much more to a recipe than simply another way to 
make a meal, demonstrating that food provides many kinds of sustenance.


