Safar

Blends memoir and history to explore the role of Punjabi food in fostering community and identity among South Asian refugees and immigrants. Safar: Finding Home, History, and Culture through Punjabi Food in the American West is the journey of South Asian refugees, immigrants and their children-in particular, Sikhs, Jats and Muslims-who moved to the southwestern states of America over centuries as farmers, truck drivers, restaurant owners and dhaba/diner stall cooks. An expedition in search of the asli or real Punjabi food, the author explores how their food traveled from British India pre-partition (1947) to now, covering the different waves of Punjabi immigration to the southwest through the years as a result of war, fear, deprivation or for a better future. Interwoven in Safar is the author''s own immigrant journey as a graduate student to America in 1993, her quest to find home through the food her Bengali refugee parents made which then translated to a physical journey she embarked on to visit the different Punjabi communities in California, Arizona and New Mexico. The book is divided into parts, focusing on four Punjabi women, each a part of a different wave of South Asian immigrants to the American West, and the food and recipes they brought with them that connect them to their pasts. Safar shares stories of displacement, discrimination, community, and hope alongside how families build, grow, fade and new family structures happen. It seeks answers to the universal question of immigrant journeys and the true meaning of home, of comfort food and what constitutes a ''true Punjabi'' meal, as well as the question of what fusion/hybrid foods and communities meant in the times of restricted citizenship and anti-miscegenation laws. Food is an essential tool-something we all need to survive-and when immigrants travel, settle and create new worlds, how do they bring the country they left to their new land through their food? ...

List of contents

Author's Note
Part 1: Why We Travel
Chapter 1: Why We Travel and How This Happened
Chapter 2: What Makes a Sikh?
Chapter 3: The Safar, The Journey
Part 2: The First Wave: Sheila, The Punjabi-Mexican Daughter of Pioneers
Chapter 4: Brown Marriages and the Food They Created
Chapter 5: A Lot of Laws
Chapter 6: Sheila, Daughter of The First Wave
Chapter 7: But What About the Japanese?
Chapter 8: Sheila in Arizona
Chapter 9: Sheila, The Indian
Chapter 10: Sheila, The Student
Chapter 11: Sheila, The Home-Maker
Chapter 12: Sheila, The Pie-Maker
Chapter 13: Sheila, Now
Part 3: The Second Wave: The Gurdwara, The Women
Chapter 14: The Second Wave
Chapter 15: The Twenty-Six: Who Built The Gurdwara?
Chapter 16: Daughter of Second Wave Families
Chapter 17: The Quietness of Those Who Leave
Part 4: In Between Immigration Waves: The Khalistan Story
Chapter 18: Stockton Gurdwara: Of Religion, Revolution & Community
Chapter 19: The Bhindranwale Story: A Terrorist? A Saint?
Chapter 20: Indira and The Sikh Genocide
Chapter 21: Khalistan, the Idea: Now What?
Part 5: The Third Wave, Jassi, the Amritdhari, Ajit's Mother
Chapter 22: Diwali and The Face of Punjabi Tandoor: Jassi
Chapter 23: Jassi, Now
Chapter 24: Jassi, The Third Wave Immigrant
Part 6: On Truckers, Dhabas, & Those Who Changed Central Valley California, Uma Devi
Chapter 25: Dhabas, A Love Story
Chapter 26: The Sikh Age
Chapter 27: The Third Wave, Now
Part 7: The Safar, The Journey, And Now
Chapter 28: And Now
Chapter 29: London, Our People, and Our Safar
Notes
Index
About the Author

About the author

Madhushree Ghosh is the author of the award-winning KHABAAR: An Immigrant Journey of Food, Memory, and Family (2022). Ghosh is an invited speaker at major book festivals and her work has been published in 2023 Best American Essays in Food Writing, as well as Pushcart-nominated and published in The New York Times, Vogue India, Washington Post, LA Times, The Writer, Longreads, Catapult, BOMB, Guernica, LA Review of Books, LitHub, Panorama Journal, The Rumpus, Brevity, Hippocampus Magazine, Atlas Obscura, The Chicago Quarterly Review, DAME Magazine, Le Sirenuse, Garnet News, The Surfers Journal, Del Sol Review, D&O magazine and others. She is also an Oakley Hall scholar, actor, and screenwriter, and her award-winning plays have been performed at San Diego Actors Alliance festivals. Ghosh is an invited author at Garnet News, as well as a science columnist at Construction Magazine, and has given TEDx talks. She is a frequent speaker on "Women in Science" panels globally and hosts multiple cooking classes on making Indian food, focusing on the science and health behind those culinary treats, in San Diego. In 2024, she launched KhabaarCo, a curated literary conversation and salon around food, our roots, social justice, and our words. She can be reached at @writemadhushree. She resides in Southern California.

Product details

• Authors: Madhushree Ghosh
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 11.06.2026
• EAN: 9798881842673
• ISBN: 9798881842673
• No. of pages: 224
• Subjects: Guides > Food & drink > International cuisine; COOKING / History, Food & society, Migration, immigration & emigration, Migration, immigration and emigration, Cultural studies: food and society, HISTORY / Asia / South / India, COOKING / Regional & Cultural / Indian & South Asian