9781422277508

6

C onn ect i ng C u ltu r es T hrough F am i ly and F ood

Introduction

T hailand is anation inSoutheast Asia, flanked by Myanmar on thewest and by Laos andCambodia on the east; it also shares a border withMalaysia to thesouth.Theword thai means “free,” and Thai people will tell youwith pride that theirs is the only South Asian country that was never colonized by a Western power. The countrywas calledSiam by outsiders, until the name was officially changed in 1948. But some remnants of the old name still ex- ist: For example, Siamese cats were bred from cats that were native to Thailand. Officially, Thailand is divided into 76 provinces, eachwith its own governor and administration. How- ever, it’s often said (only somewhat jokingly) that there is oneadditional

province: Los Angeles, California. Los Angeles and its surrounding communitiesarehome to the largest communityof Thaipeopleanywhere outside of Asia. Roughly two-thirds of all ThaiAmericans call Southern California home. The existence of Thai commu- nities anywhere outside Thailand is fairly new. Unlike countries with long histories of emigration—Ire- land, for example, or Greece—Thai people have only been moving to other countries in large numbers since the mid-1960s. People of Thai ancestry are still sorting out pre- cisely what it means to be a Thai American, Thai Canadian, or Thai Australian, simply because the en- tire phenomenon is only about 50 years old.