Tra conservazione e integrazione: la cultura alimentare nelle memorie e nella letteratura dei primi immigrati italiani nel Rio Grande do Sul

Abstract

This article analyses the role that gastronomic cultures have played as distinctive and symbolic elements in the definition of “ethnic” collective identities. We analysed the Italian emigration to the Brazilian estate of Rio Grande do Sul, which since 1875 has received a large number of compatriots, who have become landowners. Through literary and memorialist sources of early immigrants, we describe the dynamics which helped the emerge of transnational gastronomy with a look also on parallel migratory processes in the urban contexts.