Food, place, and memory: Bangladeshi fish stores on Devon Avenue, Chicago

This article explores the importance of food in the production of immigrant identity and placemaking in Chicago. The Bangladeshi fish stores located on Devon Avenue, Chicago, serve the unique culinary needs of immigrants from Bangladesh and Bengali-speaking regions of India. Based on interviews with store owners and customers and architectural analyses of these stores, this research explores how everyday engagements with food, specifically fish harvested in the delta region of Bangladesh, trigger cultural memories and reproduce particular forms of shopping practices and place identities among this relatively less-studied group of South Asian immigrants. This case study suggests that immigrant world-making is Janus-faced: simultaneously looking back and remembering the past while adapting to the present and reconstituting hybrid places in both…