Editor's Introduction

The notion of food performing "boundary work" derives from historian Charlotte Biltekoff's excellent exploration of four influential American food movements that not only defined what was "good" food, but also what was "bad" food and by association, who were "bad eaters." In Acquired Tastes Brenda Beagan and Gwen Chapman validate Biltekoff's concept through a survey of Canadian food practices that illustrates in extensive detail how Canadians make conscious food choices and through those choices communicate their sense of self and community. In these interviews, Canadians seem very aware that their food choices communicate meaning in and of themselves, and in this way illustrate an innate understanding of what Annie Hauck-Lawson has called "the food voice," a concept that was the subject of a special issue of Food, Culture and Society she guest edited in Spring 2004. Contributors to CuiZine 5.2 all engage with the food voice. Some -- like Taiaiake Alfred -- describe how they and their community speak in a food voice, and offer a translation for us in written words and images of what it means to create, serve, and share a particular meal or dish. Others -- like Florence Pasche Guignard -- describe their encounter, when coming to Canada, of food voices that seem different to their own. Others provide analysis of the foods voices we can hear if we listen and read astutely to historical cookbooks. Indeed, this is the lesson emerging both from Rachel Snell's analytical essay, and three new additions to our popular series "Cooking the Books" by Julia Dawson, Marcella Walton and Laura Shine. The food voice speaks can be heard in multiple venues however. So we are particularly pleased in this special issue to showcase an article on "New Trends in Online Food Discourse," which won the journal's award for the best student presentation at the 2014 Conference on Food in Translation, held in Bertinoro Italy earlier this year. Congratulations to Marie-Louise Brunner and Selina Schmidt, as well as to their faculty supervisor Stefan Diemer. For our "Canadian Literary Meals" series in this issue, we selected a wonderful excerpt from Hiromi Goto's The Kappa Child and photos by Lilliane Dang. Our focus on foodways of the Asian community in Canada was no coincidence. Lines of critical inquiry relating especially to Asian-Canadian identities -- through hybrid cuisine and restaurant spaces -- have been opened in recent years by Lily’s Cho’s Eating Chinese, Wenying Xu’s Eating Identities, Tseen Khoo and Kam Louie’s Culture, Identity, Commodity: Diasporic Chinese Literatures in English, and by others as well [Baena; Beauregard; Deer; Hartley]). However, there remains much work to be done to explore Canadian literature's narratives of identity told in the food voice. So we hope that this new addition to our literary series invites you to further explore Canada's literary and culinary bounty. My thanks to Renée Desjardins and Marianne Noël for their translation expertise and collegial support of the journal, to Valerie Silva for editorial support, to Erin Yanota for work on the journal's website, and to Alexia Moyer for her creativity and insight, which continues to enrich the journal and its offerings. The journal is blessed indeed to have Renée Desjardins as our very able Lead for External Communications. Dans une étude portant sur quatre mouvements alimentaires importants aux États-Unis, l’historienne Charlotte Biltekoff suggère que la nourriture joue un rôle « frontalier », ou, plutôt, un genre de barème par lequel le « bon goût » est déterminé (Biltekoff, 2013). Brenda Beagan et Gwen Chapman valident les propos de Biltekoff à l’aide d’un sondage exhaustif sur les pratiques alimentaires au Canada. Celui-ci …