Book Review: Chinese Espresso: Contested Race and Convivial Space in Contemporary Italy, by Grazia TingDeng. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. 2024. 288 pp. paperback $27.95. <scp>ISBN</scp> : 9780691245799

Since the late 2000s, the coffee bar business in Italy has been undergoing a massive transformation. These places of sociability, which became a staple of the Italian social scene with the growth in espresso consumption after the Second World War, have evolved into a new business niche for Chinese immigrants, the third largest non-EU immigrant group after Albanians and Moroccans. In Chinese Espresso: Contested Race and Convivial Space in Contemporary Italy, Grazia Ting Deng delves into the dynamics of the social space afforded by Chinese-run coffee bars in Italy. Drawing on a 14-month ethnographic study conducted in Bologna between May 2014 and July 2015, Deng examines the paradox of Chinese baristas, racialized and deemed extracomunitari, serving a drink strongly associated with Italian culture and identity. The conviviality of the coffee bar depends on the manual and emotional labor of Chinese baristas employed during their everyday encounters and interactions with Italian and immigrant customers. Consisting of six chapters, a preclude, an intermezzo, and a coda, the book explores how Chinese immigrants, the convivial bricoleurs as Deng calls them, have taken over the coffee bar business and maintained their sociable character while negotiating their own way into Italy's social, cultural, and racial landscape. Grounded in Italian history, Chinese migration to Europe, and the factors driving demographic change in Italy, the first part of Chinese Espresso explores the genealogy of coffee bars along with the emergence and typology of bar cinesi in the country. Deng indicates that Chinese immigrants prefer taking over existing coffee bars from Italians rather than setting up new ones. This tendency stands in stark contrast to the theories of ethnic enclaves and middleman minorities, thereby making it an unprecedented case study. The coffee bar business in Italy relies heavily upon family labor, which has come to pose a challenge to aging Italian owners as their better-educated children choose not to take over the family business. Moreover, for many middle-class Italians, the business has started to symbolize arduous and undesirable labor with little to no leisure, which helps further explain why Italians tend to leave this niche. For Chinese immigrants, running a coffee bar represents salvation from labor exploitation in manufacturing and the hardships of working as street vendors while providing them with autonomy and flexibility. In the right place at the right time, Chinese immigrants pursued self-employment opportunities just as many Italians were leaving their businesses. In Italy, coffee bars offer more than just drinks; they also serve as convenience stores and game rooms, often featuring on-site slot machines. While many Italians associate Chinese-managed coffee bars with the elderly and immigrants, as well as gambling, Deng emphasizes the diverse nature of bar cinesi in Italy. Considering the impact of gender, generation, and social class on the nature of sociality and the use of space, she categorizes coffee bars into three groups: those in the city center, on the periphery, and in-between. Bars in the city center, with no slot machines in sight, primarily serve middle-class clientele, mainly consisting of office workers who stop by on their way to work or during their lunch breaks. However, these recurring customers usually spend little time at the bar. On the other hand, bars on the periphery are often frequented by neighbors who have been customers since a young age, harboring a sense of attachment and belonging to the place. Finally, bars in-between cater to a male-dominated working-class clientele, with the youngest customers being middle-aged, along with immigrants fostering male sociability. One characteristic that runs across all three types is the Chinese owners' commitment to maintaining former clients and the social relations of the coffee bar they took over. The second part of the book explores the mechanisms, encounters, and interactions that constitute the social space at bar cinesi. Deng argues that her interlocutors neither see barista skills as inherently Italian nor believe that their new profession requires any prior knowledge of taste. In her analysis of taste production in coffee bars, Deng identifies three distinct types: industrial, sensory, and subjective taste. Due to the mechanization of coffee brewing, industrial taste is consistently achieved through the use of preset espresso machines and grinders, as well as roasted coffee beans delivered by suppliers. This process requires minimal barista skills, except when preparing cappuccino, which calls for sensory skills, including sight, hearing, and touch. When Chinese immigrants purchase a coffee bar business, the acquisition typically includes its machinery, décor, supplier list, and existing customer base. Deng asserts that immigrants inherit a taste community with the purchase, one that has constituted the sociality of the coffee bar for years, if not decades. Therefore, subjective taste, while informing Chinese immigrants of previously established preferences at the bar, positions customers as co-creators of taste and contributes to the maintenance of the clientele inherited from previous owners. At bar cinesi, Chinese baristas come into daily contact with diverse ethnic groups of customers, including Italians and immigrants, and use their emotional labor to foster a convivial social space. Deng argues that baristas perform hospitality by using Italian names, speaking Italian, and smiling while serving customers. Through their emotional labor, Chinese baristas cultivate close relationships with their regular clients. However, this sociality is spatially limited, as most baristas do not interact with customers beyond the bar. Moreover, race relations and Italy's racial hierarchy shape the sociality inside. Deng asserts that while Chinese immigrants are racialized in Italy, having internalized the country's racial hierarchy, they also engage in acts of racialization. For example, the performance of hospitality can be withheld from undesirable clients, mostly of immigrant backgrounds, who are assumed to lower the bar's social status. At the intersection of phenotype, culture, and social class, Chinese baristas perceive Italians (laowai) as lazy and pleasure-seeking, yet European and white while categorizing immigrants of Arab and Muslim origin (banhei) as non-white. Against this backdrop, Chinese convivial bricoleurs actively create a social space from communities that either racialize them or whom they racialize, as these groups form the basis of their clientele in the coffee bar business. The book Chinese Espresso: Contested Race and Convivial Space in Contemporary Italy illuminates how a racialized immigrant group carves out a niche in the economy by entering a business closely associated with the native culture and identity. Although it is not the main focus of this book, it would have been interesting to understand how Italian and immigrant customers perceive Chinese-managed coffee bars and their owners. Such an analysis would have enhanced our understanding of social space within the coffee bar business and contributed to the macro-level analysis of racialization in Italy from a micro-level perspective. Additionally, the study of sociality in coffee bars would have been deepened if the author had explored further how these convivial bricoleurs resolve conflicts and disputes among themselves and with their customers. That said, writing in a lucid and descriptive prose, Deng refrains from romanticizing the conviviality of coffee bars or depicting Chinese immigrants as helpless victims. Instead, she is vividly portraying them as agents brokering their place in Italy through everyday encounters within the social confines of a coffee bar. This book would make a valuable read for scholars and students of immigration, race, social space, and culture.