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Review of: 

Sameness in Diversity: Food and Globalization in Modern America 

Laresh Jayasanker. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2020. Pp. xiv + 269, 

introduction, bibliography, index. 

 

Review by: 

Claire Schmidt 

 

Laresh Jayasanker’s analysis of the impact of globalization on American food rests on a 

simple thesis: as post-1965 immigration patterns increased choices available in the daily 

American diet, globalized market forces caused those choices to homogenize through 

increasingly small numbers of food purveyors. Sameness in Diversity is first and foremost a 

history: a cultural history of American food, and a business history of the globalized food 

industry. Jayasanker’s approach consciously avoids the trite lament of the ways American 

corporate food has disrupted “authentic” non-American food traditions (McDonaldization 

5); instead, he focuses on the way constantly evolving ethnic foodways—particularly Latin 

American, Indian, Chinese, and Italian—have shaped twenty-first century American 

purchasing and eating.  

 

Jayasanker begins by outlining the premise that food is a lens through which to understand 

culture, and that American culture is driven by the twin forces of sameness and diversity. 

He approaches this paradox through four themes: 1) food purveyors (grocers, 

restaurateurs, and cookbook authors) as translators; 2) foreign corporate collaboration 

with American corporations and homogenized foreign cuisine in the American context; 3) 

globalization in the American suburb; and 4) “authenticity” as a contested but highly valued 

experience in the face of disorientation of globalization. The introduction shows U.S. 

immigration history, making the point to which he returns throughout the book that in 

1970, only 4.7 percent of Americans were foreign-born—the lowest rate in nearly 200 

years (6). 

 

Chapter 1 describes the consolidation of fruit and vegetable trade in and out of the U.S. as 

globalization made shipping far cheaper while creating demand for new and unfamiliar 

products in new markets due to economically-driven migration patterns. Jayasanker lays 

the groundwork here for his emphasis on consumer valuation of both variety and 

consistency. Chapter 2 continues the study of consolidation and globalization in grocery 

stores, and the big four in the U.S. (Kroger, Safeway, Albertsons, and Walmart).  

 

Chapters 3 turns the focus to the theme of translation and the role supermarkets played in 

marketing “ethnic” food, from Chun King and chop suey (started by an Italian in northern 

Minnesota) to La Choy and its partnership with Rosarita, the line of processed Mexican 



     Schmidt, Review, Sameness in Diversity     Digest: A Journal of Foodways & Culture 8:1/2 (2021) 

 
 

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foods. Jayasanker draws on industry publications like Progressive Grocer to evaluate the 

strategies employed by grocery stores to educate consumers and provide exciting 

experiences that felt familiar, clean, and safe. Supermarkets broadened their range of 

products to meet both U.S.-born and foreign-born desires for both excitement and 

continuity, while at the same time they narrowed their suppliers. This shift is also reflected 

in changes to American restaurant to accommodate a changing America.  

 

Chapter 4 focuses on the “ethnic” restaurant—particularly the menu—as a means of 

translating diversity. Jayasanker analyzes pre-and post-1960s menus and phone book 

listings to paint a picture of the rapid shift in American dining out, customer preferences, 

and common knowledge. The next step in translation is the American cookbook as 

historical source and diversity translator.  

 

In Chapter 5, Jayasanker focuses on cookbook authors Madhur Jaffery, Julia Child, Jane 

Grigson, Claudia Roden, and Elizabeth Ortiz as successful cultural translators. Their 

multinational backgrounds and ability to communicate across boundaries made cuisine 

accessible to Americans. He emphasizes the role played by publishing house Alfred A. 

Knopf and editor Judith Jones in translating foreign foods, techniques, and traditions for 

American home cooks. Jayasanker focuses on the two major goals of ethnic cookbooks: 

using ingredients readily available in the U.S. and having “unusual and varied” recipes for a 

foreign cuisine (93). Throughout this chapter and the book as a whole, Jayasanker focuses 

on mangoes and cilantro: in the 1960s as foods requiring explanation, comparisons, and 

description and in the 2000s as unremarkable and familiar mainstream ingredients that 

have been successfully translated into American food.  

 

In the final chapters, Jayasanker focuses on three cuisines. In Chapter 6, he charts the 

history of Indian restaurants in the U.S., from nostalgic colonial outposts (1960s), to 

invocations of the differently nostalgic Mughal Empire (1970s), to diverse Indian cuisines 

(2000s). Chapter 7 tracks the history of Chinese restaurants in the US, ending with the 

ubiquity of P.F. Chang’s, while Chapter 8 tells the story of tortilla manufacture and 

distribution from the 1940s to the early 2000.  

 

While the author engages racism in every chapter, the bulk of his analysis of racial 

prejudice and food is saved for the conclusion, titled “What is an Authentic Taco?”. He 

describes his initial hope that food could transcend racism. He writes, “My thinking went 

like this: perhaps when we eat the food of ‘other,’ we are less likely to be prejudiced against 

that group” (143). It is also in this final section that Jayasanker confronts the role of 

immigrant labor in the American food system and performance in staging authenticity. 

 



     Schmidt, Review, Sameness in Diversity     Digest: A Journal of Foodways & Culture 8:1/2 (2021) 

 
 

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The seven chapters themselves comprise 150 pages, while the remaining 120 are extensive 

notes for each chapter along with a weighty bibliography of primary sources. Jayasanker’s 

methodology incorporates archived material, including primary texts (menus, phone 

books, industry newsletters), newspaper articles, and academic food studies sources.  

 

Folklorists will appreciate Jayasanker’s recognition of and reminders that tradition is 

invented, culture is dynamic, and romanticized notions of static Others uphold colonial 

discourses. Since Jayasanker is a historian, folklorists will find few of their fellow folklorists 

cited in the notes and references. That said, Jayasanker’s work is of great value to foodways 

scholars whose interests include the suburban, the mainstream, and the historical.   

 

 


