Inside the UCLA exhibit case, the family cookbooks offer generations of recipes and traditions that have persisted beyond place and time in America's Middle Eastern diaspora communities.
There is "Assyrian Cookery: Exotic Foods that Outlasted a Civilization" and the "Iraqi Family Cookbook: From Mosul to America." There are Palestinian cookbooks from 1960s Detroit, and Armenian cookbooks from 1920s Boston. "Alice's Kitchen: Traditional Lebanese Cooking" by Linda Dalal Sawaya offers a treasury of her mother's recipes, including spinach pie and sesame cookies.
The most extraordinary thing about the cookbooks, however, is that they are housed together in one glass exhibit case. They are part of a groundbreaking exhibit at UCLA that seeks to present a pan-ethnic identity for Middle Eastern Americans though a collective display of their literature, media, scholarly works, memoirs and other written material.
Whatever political, religious and ethnic differences divide ethnic Armenians and Turks, Arabs and Israelis, Iranians and Assyrians, exhibit organizers say, commonalities also bind them -- like shared spices and dishes in their cuisine, such as cardamom, falafel and hummus.
Consider Sawaya's book. It might focus on growing up Lebanese American in Los Angeles, but it contains scenes that might resonate with an Armenian or Arab -- memories of community picnics, visiting family vineyards, curing olives and cooking with three generations of women.
"We're saying you can build bridges and see commonalities without neutering your own heritage," said Jonathan Friedlander, assistant director of the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies. He organized the exhibit with David G. Hirsch, librarian for Middle Eastern Studies at the UCLA Charles E. Young Research Library.
Friedlander, an Israel native, said the exhibit represented fledgling efforts to promote and explore a Middle Eastern American identity through academic programs and cultural offerings.
Like Asian Americans who have established collective studies centers, professional organizations and civil rights groups despite their ethnic differences, he said, Middle Eastern Americans could potentially move toward such joint endeavors based on shared geography, immigration patterns, cuisine, music and other traditions.
The need for research on Middle Eastern Americans has soared since 9/11, Friedlander said. But only one program in the nation, he said, collectively examines them -- City University of New York Graduate Center's Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center.
