The reading on chapter 3 in One Out of Three: Immigrant New York in the 21st Century states that “even when they are drastically underpaid, however, low-wage immigrants are greatly improving the quality of life of New Yorkers”. This made me think of my everyday life and the services that I have access to. How much differently would the economy of the United States have been if the 1965 change in federal immigration law had never occurred? Would U.S. born people have picked up the roles that immigrants now occupy?

Also the reading on chapter 7 in the same textbook speaks about the influence that  Jamaicans and West Indians seem to have African Americans already in the United States. Is there any other culture that is also influenced by the Jamaican and West Indian immigrants? What examples of this do we see?

As I was reading “Food maps: Tracing Boundaries of ‘home’ through Food Relations” by Lidia Marte, I could not help but keep thinking back to how the people who were involved in this research were immigrants who were toiling in the U.S. I wonder how this research would have turned out had the subjects been immigrants who had become immensely successful. Assuming that the wealthy immigrants can take more freedom to eat out, how would their foodmaps differ from that of those presented in this study? How would their kitchens look, and how would the current kitchens be different from those they had before coming to U.S.? Thinking of how the current trend is to consume “healthy” foods, how would their foodmaps juggle the traditional and ethnic foods that they know as a heritage and the “healthy” foods that are constantly being advertised? A different approach to this topic could be to study second and third generations of immigrants and their foodmaps. Would they still retain reminiscence of the foodmaps of their first-generation parents? Or would the maps be altered so drastically according to their environments that they would be hard to title “Dominican,” “Mexican” or “Domino-Mexican”?

Initially, I was very surprised that the Gastropolis reading focused on Roosevelt Avenue and Jackson Heights, which is just about the same area my group is doing our project on. The article points out how the various senses are used to savor food in Hispanic dining, making a particular note that auditory and visual senses are also used through flags, pictures, etc. However, I think saying this is specific to only Hispanic culture is incorrect. In the Restaurants reading, we were shown how an Indian and a Pakistani restaurant used pictures and mirrors to affect the customers’ experience. For America, the average McDonald’s or Dunkin’ Donuts will usually have top Billboard hits playing over the radio. A particularly upscale Burger King in Douglaston has pictures of various celebrities like Will Smith and George Clooney adorning each booth and a red muscle car in the middle of the restaurant that serves as a table. So, isn’t it reasonable to say that all the senses play a crucial part in dining anywhere, not just Hispanic restaurants?

From where certain cooks shop to detailed maps/pictures of the food itself the idea of food-maps offers compelling insights into a certain culture. For an archeologist looking at a food map, 100 or even a 1000 years from now, what kind of information would they be able to convey from it other than what’s already directly stated? Could they infer things like socioeconomic status or reach a detail conclusion on gender roles for example?

In the reading “Foodmaps: Tracing Boundaries of ‘home’ through Food Relations”, the quote “My family did not get bags of rice, beans, and powdered milk from the Balaguer government (1970s), we did it out of principle, since they used to play with the hunger of the people . . . ” arises. Can you think of any examples of a nation’s government that purposefully did not or does not provide food sufficiently for its people?

The reading also mentions that one immigrant woman saw people crying on trains and one day she cried from sadness of the immigrant struggles. Although there were losses, there were gains, she stated, such as becoming a citizen and doing what she could for her children. Do immigrants primarily keep going even when they’re struggling so as to benefit their children, or do you think there is another dominant reason?