My presentation shares ethnographic vignettes from an ongoing investigation of the religious lives of Thai-American restaurateurs in Elmhurst, New York. More specifically, I center this population’s interactions with the rising popularity and worship of Hindu gods in their predominantly Buddhist homeland. Drawing on interviews with Thai-American restaurant owners and observations of the artwork that decorates their businesses, I explore how new trends in popular Thai religion have influenced the beliefs and business practices of residents in New York’s primary Thai enclave. By taking note of the frequency at which paintings and icons of Hindu figures like Ganesha, Brahma, and Lakshmi appear next to Southeast Asian and Chinese deities like Nang Kwak, Thao Wetsuwan, and Kuan Yin in the Thai restaurant setting, my talk uses a material analysis of Asian restaurant art to raise two related questions: (1) Are Thai-Americans performing Thai-ness by incorporating Indian deities within their religious repertoires?; (2) How might we re-think the nature of contemporary Orientalism if these projects are curated by Asian Americans who are following patterns of emerging religious syncretism in their homelands?
The roots for this inquiry emerged shortly after June 2022 when Shekar Krishnan, a well-known politician and member of the Queens City Council, cemented his borough’s well-deserved reputation for ethnic and linguistic diversity by presiding over a short, summertime ceremony intended to rename a three-block stretch on Elmhurst’s Woodside Avenue as “Little Thailand Way.” This official acknowledgement by Krishan of his Thai-American constituents was also cheered by Bangkok-based government agencies such as Thailand’s Board of Investment and the Siam Commercial Bank who used the occasion to stage a weekend-long cultural festival that featured recitals by Thai classical dancers, Muay Thai boxers, and kiosks selling massage treatments, Buddha statues and Thai street foods such as chicken satay and meatballs (Rattanakit 2022). While this festival in Elmhurst signaled a new era for America’s growing Thai diaspora and its role in strengthening diplomatic ties between the community’s old and new homes, it also re-hashed a longstanding series of Orientalist stereotypes that, as argued by sociologist Mark Padoongpatt, have played crucial roles in confining Thai American identities within the fetishizing frames of food, faith, and fun (Padoongpatt 2017).
Despite being among the earliest Asian groups to settle in the United States, a recognizable, Thai-American community only surfaced in the early-1970s (Perreira 2015). Coinciding with the most intense moments in the history of America’s involvement with Southeast Asia’s geopolitical conflicts, Thailand’s ruling military junta invited US troops to set up army bases and Rest & Recreation centers on Thai territory in exchange for foreign investment and assistance to quell a popular communist insurgency. In addition to bringing Thailand within the ambit of America’s informal global empire, a key consequence of this Cold War-era partnership between Thai and US governments was the opening of opportunities for American and Thai citizens to visit each other’s countries in significant numbers. As American nationals traveled to Thailand for a range purposes, they quickly discovered the outstanding qualities of Thai cuisine that had been carefully developed over the previous centuries, and which had also been influenced by the culinary traditions of the neighboring Chinese, Indian, and Malay cultures. Thus, when Thai nationals also began to migrate to North America, they encountered an American population that already was familiar and hungry for the foods of their homeland. As a result, in response to the popular appeal of their native cuisine, the earliest generations of Thai-American immigrants quickly discovered a niche for themselves as entrepreneurs in the burgeoning American restaurant industry.
This convergence between foodways and migration explains the emergence of Thai-American neighborhood across the United States, including the one that I describe in Elmhurst. Founded in the 1970s, the community’s numbers grew steadily through the 1980s and 1990s, a period when Thailand’s economy expanded at dizzyingly rapid rates. Maintaining exceptionally close links with their homeland, Thais across America were extensively aided by the Thai government which supplied funds to communities like the one in Elmhurst for two principal objectives: (1) the construction of Buddhist temples; and (2) the development of a vibrant Thai restaurant industry (Padoongpatt 2017; Bhattacharjee 2023). My talk discusses the intersection of these two key aspects of Thai American life in Queens and analyzes their deep connections to developments in contemporary Thai religion. While Buddhist temples such as Wat Phutthai Thavorn and the monks who run them in Little Thailand Way do indeed play pivotal roles in shaping the religious experiences of the neighborhood’s residents, my presentation argues that an equally significant and often overlooked portion of Thai American religious activity occurs outside the temple’s walls. More specifically, these activities occur in commercial spaces like the fifty or so Thai restaurants which dot the streets of Elmhurst. With roots in middle class neighborhoods of Bangkok and Chiang Mai, many of Elmhurst’s Thai-Buddhist restaurateurs witnessed first-hand the birth of devotional cults to Hindu deities like Ganesha, Kali, and Kubera in Thailand that arose immediately after the 1997 Asian Economic Crisis (Jackson 2021).
My talk presents the testimonies of such individuals who have carried their belief in Hindu deities from places like Bangkok to the Big Apple where they have then visually inscribed their faith onto the pieces of art which line the walls of their restaurants. Based on two important points, namely (1) the deep-seated ties between Thai Americans and Thailand; and (2) the tremendous popularity of Thai food and Thai restaurants in urban America, I investigate how the visual ambience and décor of restaurants in New York’s largest Thai enclave play key roles in transmitting notions of Hindu divinity to the modern American zeitgeist. All in all, this case study of how Hindu deities show up in Thai restaurant spaces allows us to: (1) meaningfully de-center India in the study of Global Hinduism, and (2) recognize that the objects and images which shape American understandings of Hindu traditions have their sources in many other parts of Asia, particularly Thailand.
My presentation examines the religious lives of Thai-American restaurateurs in Elmhurst, New York, site of the East Coast’s first officially recognized “Little Thailand.” By considering why paintings and icons of Hindu figures like Ganesha, Brahma, and Kubera frequently appear in restaurant décor alongside images of Southeast Asian and Chinese deities, I explore how emerging trends in Thai religion—notably the growing popularity of Hindu deities in Buddhist-majority Thailand—shape Thai immigrants' beliefs and business practices. In the process, my ethnographic fieldwork and visual analyses raise two key questions: (1) By incorporating Indian deities into their religious practices, how do Thai Americans express their cultural identities? (2) How are conventional understandings of Orientalism reshaped when Asian Americans themselves curate and participate in syncretic devotional movements with roots in modern Asia? Through these inquiries, my talk highlights the intersections of migration, religious materiality, and transnational cultural flows in shaping contemporary Thai-American identity.