Rethinking Chicana/o Literature through Food: Postnational Appetites

238 Pages·2013·1.66 MB·English

by  Nieves Pascual Soler

LITERATURES OF THE AMERICAS
About the Series
This series seeks to bring forth contemporary critical interventions
within a hemispheric perspective, with an emphasis on perspectives
from Latin America. Books in the series will highlight work that
explores concerns in literature in different cultural contexts across
historical and geographical boundaries and will also include work
on the specific Latina/o realities in the United States. Designed to
explore key questions confronting contemporary issues of literary and
cultural import, Literatures of the Americas will be rooted in tradi-
tional approaches to literary criticism but will seek to include cutting
edge scholarship using theories from postcolonial, critical race, and
ecofeminist approaches.
Series Editor
Norma E. Cantú is professor of English and US Latino Studies at the
University of Missouri, Kansas City and professor emerita from the
University of Texas at San Antonio. Her edited and coedited works
include Inside the Latin@ Experience (2010, Palgrave Macmillan),
Telling to Live: Latina Feminist Testimonios (2001, Duke University
Press), Chicana Traditions: Continuity and Change (2000, The
University of Illinois Press), and Dancing across Borders: Danzas y
Bailes Mexicanos (2003, The University of Illinois Press).
Books in the Series:
Radical Chicana Poetics
Ricardo F. Vivancos Pérez
Rethinking Chicana/o Literature through Food: Postnational Appetites
Edited by Nieves Pascual Soler and Meredith E. Abarca
Literary and Cultural Relations between Brazil and Mexico: Deep
Undercurrents
Paulo Moreira
Previous publications
Nieves Pascual Soler
Ed. Witness to Pain: Essays on the Translation of Pain into Art (2005)
Co-ed. Masculinities, Femininities and the Power of the Hybrid in U.S.
Narratives: Essays on Gender Borders (2007)
Co-ed. Feeling in Others: Essays on Empathy and Suffering in Modern
American Culture (2008)
A Critical Study of Female Culinary Detective Stories: Murder by
Cookbook (2009)
Co-ed. Stories through Theories, Theories through Stories: Native
American Storytelling and Critique (2009)
Hungering as Symbolic Language: What Are We Saying When We
Starve Ourselves (2012)
Co-ed. Comidas bastardas: Gastronomía, tradición e identidad en
América Latina (2013)
Meredith E. Abarca
Voices in the Kitchen: Views of Food and the World from Working-
Class Mexican and Mexican American Women (2006)
Rethinking Chicana/o Literature
through Food
Postnational Appetites
Edited by
Nieves Pascual Soler and
Meredith E. Abarca
RETHINKING CHICANA/O LITERATURE THROUGH FOOD
Copyright © Nieves Pascual Soler and Meredith E. Abarca, 2013.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-1-137-37859-0
All rights reserved.
First published in 2013 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States— a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-47835-4 ISBN 978-1-137-37144-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137371447
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rethinking Chicana/o literature through food : postnational appetites /
edited by Nieves Pascual Soler and Meredith E. Abarca.
pages cm.—(Literatures of the Americas)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. American literature—Mexican American authors—History and
criticism. 2. American literature—21st century—History and criticism.
3. Food in literature. I. Pascual Soler, Nieves, editor of compilation.
II. Abarca, Meredith E. editor of compilation.
PS153.M4R48 2013
810.9(cid:2)86872—dc23 2013023835
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: December 2013
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
Meredith E. Abarca and Nieves Pascual Soler
Part I Translatable Foods
Chapter 1
Diabetes, Culture, and Food: Posthumanist
Nutrition in the Gloria Anzaldúa Archive 27
Suzanne Bost
Chapter 2
Bologna Tacos and Kitchen Slaves: Food and
Identity in Sandra Cisneros’s Caramelo 45
Heather Salter
Chapter 3
Food Journeys in Places Left Unfinished at the
Time of Creation and Woman Hollering Creek 61
Norma L. Cárdenas
Part II The Taste of Authenticity
Chapter 4
“Because Feeding Is the Beginning and End”:
Food Politics in Ana Castillo’s So Far from God 79
Elizabeth Lee Steere
Chapter 5
Food, Consciousness, and Feminism in
Denise Chávez’s Loving Pedro Infante 97
Laura P. Alonso Gallo
vi CONTENTS
Part III The Voice of Hunger
Chapter 6
Families Who Eat Together, Stay Together:
But Should They? 119
Meredith E. Abarca
Chapter 7
“La Comida y La Conciencia”: Foods in the
Counter-Poetics of Lorna Dee Cervantes 141
Edith M. Vásquez and Irene Vásquez
Chapter 8
Hungers and Desires: Borderlands Appetites
and Fulfillment 155
Norma E. Cantú
Part IV Machos or Cooks
Chapter 9
Chicano Culinarius: From Cowboys to Gastronomes 173
Nieves Pascual Soler
Chapter 10
Mexican Meat Matzah Balls: Burciaga as a
Culinary Ambassador 193
Mimi Reisel Gladstein
Chapter 11
Reading the Taco Shop Poets in the Crossroads of
Chicano Postnationalism 207
Paul Allatson
Notes on Contributors 229
Index 233
Acknowledgments
T
he inception of this project leading to its completion would not
have been possible but for the generous support of the following:
Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (Plan Nacional I+D+I
2008–2011, FFI2009–09242), the Regional Government of
Andalucía (Junta de Andalucía; P08-HUM-3956; P09-HUM-4609),
and European funds. To these institutions we express our gratitude.
Of course, we thank the contributors to this volume for their work,
cooperation, and patience in the long journey it has taken to bring
this project to completion. Thanks for your commitment and willing-
ness to stay on board with us.
We also want to acknowledge, individually and collectively, those
who have been our voice of reason, our springboards for ideas, and
our anchors of support: Lucy Fischer-West, Carole M. Counihan,
Margie Whalen, and Steve Callan. We also thank our families who
have and continue to champion our intellectual endeavors.
Finally this book is dedicated:
a quienes nos alimentan y a quienes alimentamos
Introduction
Meredith E. Abarca and Nieves Pascual Soler
R
ethinking Chicana/o Literature through Food: Postnational
Appetites proposes food consciousness as a theoretical paradigm to
examine the literary discourses of Chicana/o authors as they shift
from the nation to the postnation. To address how food creates con-
sciousness we must answer two questions: What is food? And, why
food? For the first one, we defer to Roland Barthes who posed this
very question in “Toward a Psychosociology of Contemporary Food
Consumption.” This was his reply: “It is not only a collection of
products that can be used for statistical and nutritional studies. It
is also, and at the same time, a system of communication, a body of
images, a protocol of usages, situations, and behavior.” As the best
tools for analyzing this complex item, he recommends that “informa-
tion about food must be gathered whenever it can be found: by direct
observation in the economy, in technique, usages and advertising;
and by indirect observation in the mental life of a given society” (29).
In other words, food is not only something edible and sustaining, it is
also a cultural object about which information can be gathered from
diverse fields. Although Barthes’s work paved the path for exploring
food as a venue of communication, his paradigm overlooks the com-
municative function of food when it is served on the pages of literary
texts. Literature is also a system of communication that shapes reality
and as such constitutes a perfect vehicle for the transmission of cul-
tural protocols.
For the second question, why food?, it must be answered that it is in
food that we find the medium to theorize the complexities of Chicana/o
present subjectivities as laid out in literary texts. Food marks its presence
even when its theoretical potential is not fully recognized. Such is the
case with the groundbreaking book Chicana/o Studies: The Chicana/o
Cultural Studies Reader, edited by Angie Chabram-Dernersesian, pub-
lished in 2006. This book stresses the need for new theories that resist
the stasis of identity many Chicanas/os have experienced as a nation. It
2 MEREDITH E. ABARCA AND NIEVES PASCUAL SOLER
is remarkable that while its cover features an image by Roland Briseño,
“Bicultural Table Setting,” none of the 37 essays compiled explores
food to further the central critique in the collection of the limitations
national narratives have had on subject formation.
The bicultural theme in Briseño’s art is captured by the integra-
tion of traditional and modern motifs framing the table setting. The
center displays a plate with three evenly spread out slices of tomato
and a spiral black and red line moving from the center of the plate
out, giving the impression that the plate is rotating clockwise. The
tomato and the spiral evoke culinary histories rooted in the Americas
that have influenced the world around. Tradition is marked by the
inclusion of two distinctly different tablecloths suggesting its mul-
tiple forms of expression. A light and a dark hand reaching out to take
the food underline ethnic diversity. Next to the knife, placed on the
right side of the plate there is a cordless phone, which speaks to the
ways technologies change everyday practices. The weaving of tradi-
tion with modernity represented by Briseño’s art seems quite perfect
for a collection that theorizes on the cultural dynamics moving the
field of Chicana/o Studies; and yet food is excluded from the corpus
of the collection.
The omission of food in the process of theorizing about identity
formation reflects a tendency that assumes that food merely repre-
sents culture rather than being a medium that also maintains, shapes,
and recreates culture. Furthermore, food serves as a medium for the-
ory building; the practice of foodmaking itself is fully theoretical.
When food philosopher Lisa Heldke refers to cooking and eating as
“thoughtful practice[s],” she speaks to the theoretical nature of these
manual tasks, advancing a view of theory that contains action and is
constituted by experience (203). We will come back to this association
in our discussion of the ways theoretical perspectives and stories guide
one another in Chicana/o literature, informing and transforming the
culture of eating and reading. For now, suffice it to say that the dif-
ficulty of bringing theory to food practices is surpassed through an
understanding of theory as perception or consciousness.1 The concept
of food consciousness we propose here, which we connect with other
forms of consciousness, speaks to a theory of pragmatic embodied
epistemology, wherein knowledge is acquired through the sensations
and emotions that food awakens in the body.
Through food consciousness we rethink the national and trans-
national limitations—particularly in terms of gender, sexuality, race,
and class—set in motion by the discourse of the Chicano Civil Rights
Movement. In section one of this introduction, “Non-Culinary Uses