Voices in the Kitchen: Views of Food and the World from Working-Class Mexican and Mexican American Women (Rio Grande/Rio Bravo: Borderlands Culture and Traditions)

Binding: Hardcover
EAN: 9781585444779
ISBN: 1585444774
Label: Texas A&M University Press
Languages:EnglishUnknownEnglishOriginal LanguageEnglishPublished
Manufacturer: Texas A&M University Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 264
Publication Date: April 28, 2006
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
Studio: Texas A&M University Press

---

Related Items:

• Tangled Routes: Women, Work, and Globalization on the Tomato Trail
• Cooking in Other Women's Kitchens: Domestic Workers in the South, 1865-1960 (John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture)
• see more

Alternate Versions: Click to Display

Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display

---

Editorial Review:

Product Description:
"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.

---

Books

Kindle Fire, Full Color 7" Multi-touch Display, Wi-Fi In association with amazon.com Product price accurate as of 02/23/2012 04:51 EST and is subject to change. $199.00