The act of eating defines and redefines borders. What constitutes American in our cuisine has always depended on a liberal crossing of borders, from the line in the sand that separates Mexico and the United States, to the grassland boundary with Canada, to the imagined divide in our collective minds between our food and their food. Immigrant workers have introduced new cuisines and ways of cooking that force the nation to question the boundaries between us and them.

The stories told in Food Across Borders highlight the contiguity between the intimate decisions we make as individuals concerning what we eat and the social and geopolitical processes we enact to secure nourishment, territory, and belonging.