Tag Archives: food

11/9/23

Food As Love, Food as Struggle

Hola a todes,

This week’s poems have been thrilling reads. Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s Making Tortillas was a vivid introduction to the relationship between queer (lesbian) love and tortillas. Today, though, I would like to discuss Caridad Moro-Gronlier’s Tortillera Poems, specifically Entry and Compulsion: A Chronology. 

While there is a lot I would like to discuss about these poems, the main theme I would like to center around today is the role of food as comfort and food as resistance within these poems. In Compulsion: A Chronology, Moro-Gronlier says “She is mean, but I taste her love in the steam that rises from rose-studded porcelain bowls she collected one dish a time…Así comen las niñas buenas, she says, approval thick as stew in my spoon.” This passage (stanza 2, lines 4-5, 9-10) was, to me, reminiscent of Tuesday’s reading, The Mystery of Survival, when the narrator was offered elote by her mother, but decided to eat coconut instead. I know that in my own life growing up in El Salvador, families don’t always comfortably speak love to one another, especially the men in our families. But they will give us food: we share food, we go out and bring food home, we bring food when we visit friends, we never show up con las manos vacías (empty handed). As shown by this poem, it is the same for our Cuban writer, as was the same from Gaspar de Alba’s Chicano perspective.

I also really enjoyed how, in Compulsion: Chronology, we can see how a specific food/edible items are used by Moro-Gronlier to represent specific points in her life and in her struggle with her sexuality, body-image, self-control and family dynamics. This reminded me of a poem that I wrote as a part of our midterm project. For my midterm project, I created a poemario, a collection of poems. The poem that reminded me the most of Compulsion is my poem, Tortilla Con Huevo. Overall, reading Tortillera reminded me of why I have been loving food studies so much, and why I am now so in love with poetry about food: specific food items carry so much history, cultural context, family history, self-image, self-control, and as we see so poignanty, food items represent love, and as maíz tells us, it represents resistance… All in a simple food item! Que vivan las gastronomic interjections! Here  are my poems. Poem 1: Tortilla Con Huevo is written chronologically and also ties in specific food items to specific chapters of my life.

Nos vemos pronto mis querides!!!

 

(Posted 9:33 AM Nov 9th)

10/3/23

Reencuentro and the Importance of Food – Reflection of Lix Lopez Visit

Elder Lopez’ visit this past Thursday was truly a gift. Prior to this term, I was not aware of the Mayan in Exile Garden at UBC. Learning about this space from Elder Lopez left me feeling hopeful, as it was a lesson of the positive impacts that result from Indigenous self-determination and Indigenous food sovereignty.

When reflecting on the visit, I think back to the concept of “desencuentro” that we learned about in class. As explained by Tamara, there is a desencuentro, a misunderstanding or non-meeting, between different cultures and different ways of knowing. Namely, there is a desencuentro between the oral and the lettered: lettered cultures clash with cultures that rely on orality. In class I brought up how lettered cultures, by not recognizing ‘other’ ways of knowing, like those of oral cultures, deny themselves an expansion of knowledge. It was an honour to learn about how Elder Lopez, when faced with the desencuentro between his Mayan worldview/traditions and Canadian/Western society and worldviews, resisted and made his way back to his ancestral roots to eventually become a Ceremonial Knowledge Keeper. It is exciting that, thanks to the Mayan Garden, future generations of Mayan children will be able to experience a reencuentro and learn about their ancestral culture at the garden.

Elder Lopez’ visit also responds to the central and recurring themes we’ve touched on in class: The importance of food, and the importance of studying food. Near the beginning of his presentation, I was excited to hear Elder Lopez talk about how when people have safe food supplies, they can build empires. This idea is what has sparked my passion for food security and especially Indigenous-led initiatives toward food security. Moreover, food and the cultivation of food crops have been central to the preservation of Elder Lopez’s, as well as his community’s, traditional knowledge. One of my favourite moments of the presentation was near the beginning, when Elder Lopez spoke about how all the generations before him, all of his ancestors, had gardens, and so gardening is in his blood. In this way, food and the cultivation of food is also spiritual, and has the ability to both connect us to something bigger than ourselves while also leading us back to our roots and ancestors.

I am enjoying learning new ways of studying food, such as approaching food and food crops with the knowledge that they have spirits, that they hold knowledge.

Something to reflect on: Has the way you approach food and food crops changed as we learn about the role of maize in Mayan society? Are you more likely to wonder about the soul of the vegetables/plants that you are eating?