Voices in the Kitchen: Views of Food and the World from Working-Class Mexican and Mexican American Women
“Literally, chilaquiles are a breakfast I grew up eating: fried corn tortillas with tomato-chile sauce. Symbolically, they are the culinary metaphor for how working-class women speak with the seasoning of their food.”—from the Introduction
Through the ages and across cultures, women have carved out a domain in which their cooking allowed them to express themselves, strengthen family relationships, and create a world of shared meanings with other women. In Voices in the Kitchen, Meredith E. Abarca features the voices of her mother and several other family members and friends, seated at their kitchen tables, to share the grassroots world view of these working-class Mexican and Mexican American women.
In the kitchen, Abarca demonstrates, women assert their own sazón (seasoning), not only in their cooking but also in their lives. Through a series of oral histories, or charlas culinarias (culinary chats), the women interviewed address issues of space, sensual knowledge, artistic and narrative expression, and cultural and social change. From her mother’s breakfast chilaquiles to the most elaborate traditional dinner, these women share their lives as they share their savory, symbolic, and theoretical meanings of food.
The charlas culinarias represent spoken personal narratives, testimonial autobiography, and a form of culinary memoir, one created by the cooks-as-writers who speak from their kitchen space. Abarca then looks at writers-as-cooks to add an additional dimension to the understanding of women’s power to define themselves.
Voices in the Kitchen joins the extensive culinary research of the last decade in exploring the importance of the knowledge found in the practical, concrete, and temporal aspects of the ordinary practice of everyday cooking.
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abuelita aesthetics agua Alma Angie Apatzingán art-in-process arte culinario casero artistic Aunt bien body casa cebolla chapter charlas charlas culinarias Chicana chilaquiles chile chiles en nogada chiste chorizo cocina comida Contreras cooking cooks-as-artists cooks-as-writers Cortes cosas create creative culinary art cultural Dinah's discourse Duvi economic enchiladas Entonces epistemology Esperanza Velez everyday expression feminist Flores Garcia viuda gender gusta gusto hacía hago Ibid ideological indigenous Irma kitchen kitchen space kitchen talk knowledge learned Licha Liduvina Velez lives los chiles luego Lupita maize mamá mano Maria Luisa marido masa meal Meredith metate Mexican mole mother nixtamal Nuevo Laredo poblano pones pozole Practice of Everyday practices Puebla pues quotidian cuisine recipe salsa sauce says sazon senses sensory-logic sexual share smell social speak story tamales taste tenía things tion tortillas traditional Vasquez Villicana viuda de Melo voice woman Yaya