In collaboration with the Afro-Asia Group and Junzi 君子 Kitchen, MOFAD and The Greene Space are excited to invite you to participate in virtual event that interrogates Afro-Asian foodways and intimacies, featuring a lecture, cooking demo, and conversation exploring the crossroads of Black diaspora and Asian diaspora cuisines.

Troubling the concept of what is “authentic” Chinese food and “fusion” cuisine, Professor Tao Leigh Goffe (Cornell University) and Chef Lucas Sin (Junzi, Nice Day) follow up on their exploration into the history of chop suey with a second installment on the varieties of fried rice across the Caribbean.

After the Cuban revolution, Cuban Chinese restaurants sprouted up all across New York City, a result of the migration of Cuban Chinese communities. The closing of La Caridad 78 signals the end of an era for Caribbean Chinese cuisine that Prof Goffe and Chef Sin will explore. Highlighting the forgotten history of African diasporic and Asian diasporic people who labored on the same plantations across the Western hemisphere from Cuba to Louisiana to Jamaica to Peru to Mississippi, they will look to food as an archive of possibility. Prof. Goffe will present a mini-lecture on the political economy of plantation life in the Americas and how fried rice tells this Afro-Asian story. A remix, the dish has many varieties from island to island in the Caribbean that represents Chinese migration across the hemisphere.