Full Description
How cross-racial and ethnic communities have created new culinary traditions and food cultures in the United States.
Culinary Mestizaje is about food, cooking, and community, but it's also about how immigrant labor and racial mixing are transforming established US food cultures from Hawai'i to the coast of Maine, South Philadelphia to the Pacific Northwest. This collection of essays asks what it means that Chamorro cooking is now considered a regional specialty of the Bay Area, and that a fusion like brisket tacos registers as "native" to Houston, while pupusas are the pride of Atlanta.
Combining community scholarly insights, cooking tips, and recipes, the pieces assembled here are interested in how the blending of culinary traditions enables marginalized people to thrive in places fraught with racial tension, anti-immigrant sentiment, and the threat of gentrification. Chefs and entrepreneurs matter in these stories, but so do dishwashers, farm laborers, and immigrants doing the best they can with the ingredients they have. Their best, it turns out, is often delicious and creative, sparking culinary evolutions while maintaining ancestral connections. The result is that cooking under the weight of colonial rule and white supremacy has, in revealing ways, created American food.
Contents
Foreword (Matt Garcia)
Buen Provecho: Mestizo Palates (Meredith E. Abarca)
Introduction (Felipe Hinojosa and Rudy P. Guevarra Jr.)
Part I: Community Narratives
1. The Native American Roots of Texas Mexican Food (AdÁn Medrano)
2. East Los Musubi: Japanese Mexican Street Food in El Sereno (Natalie Santizo)
3. "The Sun Is Gonna Shine for Everybody": Chef Smokey's ATL and Slanging "Crack" (or Birria) in Uncertain Times (Iliana Yamileth Rodriguez and Rodolfo Aguilar)
4. Food Stories and Creole Culture in Pointe CoupÉe Parish, Louisiana (Jeffery U. Darensbourg)
5. Anything but Vacationland: Latinx Egg, Blueberry, and Seafood Workers in Maine (Lori A. Flores)
6. Cajun PupuserÍas and Green Curry Boudin: The Case for Greater Acadiana (Todd Romero)
7. "Who's Invited to the Potluck?": Of Metaphors, Politics, and Food in Hawaiʻi (Roderick N. Labrador)
Part II: Personal Reflections
8. El Ultimo Taco (Felipe Hinojosa)
9. "That's Brisket, Mija": A Food Journey in Three Acts (Tyina Steptoe)
10. Matriarchal Magic (JaimÉe M. K. Marsh)
11. California Love: Mexipino Cuisine in San Diego (Rudy P. Guevarra Jr.)
12. "We Raised Hogs": A Meditation on Pork, Family, and Memory (Jerome Dotson)
13. Mourning Banquet (Joanne L. Rondilla)
14. On Reclamation and Romance (Alejandra Alexander)
Afterword (Anita Mannur)
Index
