On the last episode of our special food-and-family series Juleyka reflects on her experience around parenting and food with Claudia Serrato, a culinary anthropologist who studies how to decolonize food practices. In this inspiring conversation, Claudia shows us how to reclaim the power of the kitchen, strengthen family time by centering food, and honor our hybrid identities through what we eat.
Featured Expert:
Claudia Serrato is an Indigenous culinary anthropologist, a public scholar, a doctoral candidate, a professor of ethnic studies, an Indigenous plant-based chef, and a food justice activist scholar. She was born and raised in Los Angeles, California predominantly on a P’urhépecha, Huasteca, and Zacateco diet. At an early age, she began to cook alongside her elders, gaining time-tested food knowledge, which she centered in her academic studies, arriving at the conclusion in 2007 that decolonizing the diet was essential to the survival of Indigenous foods and foodways. Since 2014 Claudia has been actively involved in the Native food justice and sovereignty movement. Claudia is also the co-founder of Across Our Kitchen Tables, a women of color culinary hub and event series founded in 2017 that generates and supports socially responsible food-based work by women of color. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Gender, Ethnicity, and Multicultural Studies, a Master’s in Mexican American Studies, a second Master’s in Anthropology, and is currently completing a Ph.D. in sociocultural anthropology from the University of Washington, Seattle. She is currently a teaching scholar at California Polytechnic University Pomona. Learn more about her work and research here.
If you loved this episode, listen to Replicating Family Recipes That Were Never Written Down and Stepping Up from Guest to Host at Family Gatherings.
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Juleyka Lantigua:
Hi everybody. This is the final episode of our special series about food and family. As you know, for the past few weeks, we've invited our friends and colleagues at LWC Studios to sit in front of the mic. It's a change. We asked them to open up about challenging experiences involving food and their relatives. And guess what? For many of them, it was hard getting vulnerable in front of your colleagues, revealing to other people the frustrations we have with our loved ones and with ourselves at times, man, definitely not for the faint of heart.
So let me take a moment to say to every single one of our past guests since the very beginning of our show, thank you, thank you, thank you. We honor you. We were already so immensely grateful that you shared your stories with us, and now we are feeling that gratitude on a whole new level.
For this last episode in the series, we're doing something a little bit different. I'm putting myself on the spot. Yup. As if you didn't know enough about me. But the reason for that is that I wanted to talk to someone to really help me, and by extension help all of us, put into context why conversations about food and family are worth having, even when they're hard to talk about.
I also wanted to dig a little bit deeper into what these intrinsic connections between food and family and culture are and why it feels so, so important for many of us to maintain these traditions.
So as always, I'm asking what can first gens do to preserve and honor these traditions to move into new generations with the wisdom, the knowledge, and the skills that our ancestors have passed down?
In other words, I'm a food nerd and I also want parenting advice. Let's get into it.
Serrato: My name is Claudia Serrato. I am a culinary anthropologist. I'm also a [inaudible 00:02:23] American indigenous plant-based chef, and it is a great pleasure to be here.
Juleyka: I am so excited to talk to you because I love nerding out about culture and I love food, and this is the intersection of all of those things. So let's start first of all with a top line conversation about why is food so crucial? Why is it political? Why is it at the heart of so many of the ways that we understand who we are?
Serrato: We came from and organized ourselves from social organizations, from religious organizations, spiritual organizations, the way we move, the way we mother, the way we love. It's all based off of our food culture, our food traditions. Food organizes us, food provides us those instructions on how we should organize ourselves on the daily. It's how we know to be as people, as social people, as cultural people. Food is the base.
Juleyka: I love this idea of food as an organizing principle.
Serrato: Yes.
Juleyka: Right? Because when you are trying to create an organizational matrix, there are a bunch of things that go into play, right? One is what are the rules around this? The other one is measuring? How do we know that this is actually working? And then eventually there has to be evolution. These things have to evolve as we evolve.
Serrato: Absolutely.
Juleyka: Unpack for me a little bit, how do we have a healthy way of allowing food to be this organizing principle for us?
Serrato: Food has always been healthy, and there was a rupture as a result of colonialism. And so for us to recenter food as the basis of how we organize family, how we organize ourselves through social relations is that we have to do some decolonizing work, which is bringing back food to the center, honoring food as the center, building a relationship with food and a healthy one. And that's going to take some deep historical gastronomic palate work, what I like to call decolonizing the diet or decolonizing our taste buds so that we can then remember, because a lot of this has been taken from us. And so we need to remember that food again is the basis of the world of how we exist in the world, because that too has been remapped for us, restructured to fulfill a different kind of agenda, an agenda that no longer honors the body as body, but honors the body as a body to produce, to work for this capitalist system that we live in, right?
And so to rethink food and honor it, it's going to take a lot of unpacking, a lot of healing, and ultimately it's work that requires remembering our ancestral cuisines, remembering our relationships to landscape and to each other.
Juleyka: Oh man. Okay. Well you're going to love this? I'm raising two young-American boys who come from two parents who come from deeply colonized countries, Dominican Republic and Nigeria.
So help me, Claudia, what are the things, as their parents, that I can do for my own knowledge and my own understanding and my own relationship to food that can then help me to give them the best relationship to their ancestral foods from both of these incredibly rich cultures.
Serrato: Definitely. Well, I really like that you honor the fact that your youth, your semillas,] is what we like to call them is that they have a hybrid identity. So starting with that, what does it mean to have a hybrid identity? How does that reflect in terms of what they eat? So what of those foods are hybrid? And that's something I'm learning more and more too as I'm working with my own youth and my own children and my students, is we're talking about how do we honor the hybridity? How do we honor cuisine in that manner?
But then how do we backtrack and how do we recognize who we are? I feel that it begins with understanding what of what we're eating today is from our Nigerian ancestry. What of we're eating today is from our Dominican ancestry, and also to recognizing of the food that we are eating, what of it has survived colonialism?
It's a testament to resistance, to resilience, and when we see food that has still made its way, still makes its way into our hybrid palates today. Then that says a lot about the strengths of this food and its purpose of this food and why this food exists today. And then two, questioning what would happen if this food that we do eat no longer existed? Would we still be who we are? And these are questions that I like to remind my students and my own children, my own family with, is we don't eat these foods then I personally feel we would be lost.
I wouldn't know who I am if it wasn't for the foods that we eat. And so really allowing for those conversations to occur over the dinner table. We have these foods. How do these affirm who we are? And then maybe even questioning that, do these foods affirm us and how?
And if they don't, then begin to talk about that. But then I feel too that it's important to also honor how we have, in essence, have Americanized our foods. But what I've also seen in my culture, and in my community, is that we aim to assimilate, we aim to acculturate, and then at some point we're like, "Wow, these flavors and these foods, they actually need a little bit more salsa." So then we begin to Mexicanize even that, right?
And so in essence, it's just like this re-memory of our taste buds is making its way back who we are. Our taste buds are going to tell us, you know what? Let's Nigerianize this a little bit more. Let's Dominicanize this a little bit more. And what is that that we are doing to our food to enhance those flavors and why? Because it obviously means something to us.
Juleyka: I love that because one of the food trends that I'm loving is, I want to say sort of etherifying something, being a vegan or being a vegetarian or being a pescatarian, whereby we infuse those ways of eating with cultural traditions. I'm very much the believer that you can have both, that you can have food that is representative of who you are and how you have evolved, but that also touches back to who you were and who you came from.
Serrato: Exactly.
Juleyka: But let me ask you the sort of anthropological part of the food, which is, a lot of it has to do with what happens in the process of cultivating and preparing the ingredients.
Serrato: Yes.
Juleyka: So a lot of our oral traditions were handed down in kitchens, a lot of the family counseling, a lot of the child rearing, a lot of the wisdom that resulted in who we are today. A lot of that happened around cultivation and preparation of foods. And clearly in our modern environment, we're not doing that.
So how do we preserve some of those, I don't want to say ancillary, because they're not ancillary. They're very much central to the role that food has as an organizing principle for us, right?
Serrato: Yeah. This really speaks to the fast paced society we live in today where we are conditioned to believe, I want to say even domesticated to believe that we don't have that time, that to be in the space, in the kitchen space, it's oppressive to prepare food from scratch.
Juleyka: Feminist.
Serrato: Exactly, but when we rethink this, we understand that the kitchen space is actually one of the most powerful spaces to be in. It's where you have control. It's where your food is no longer being governed. It gives you this sense of power to feed your family, to be the healer of your family. It's like a decolonial feminist move. What I have seen and what I have witnessed in my own family and in my own community is slowing down a bit. And by that it means re-centering food as being just as important as those emails, just as important as that meeting, just as important as parenting, because that is what the root of parenting is. Feeding our children, feeding our families. It's taking the time to say, you know what? This is our healing time. This is our family time. This is all we have. Our kitchen space, our kitchen time, our kitchen table.
Because like you said, it's where we evolve. It's where we learn. It's where we create memories, traditions, rituals, the one space that we can honor the food and allow the food to remind us who we are through the culinary technologies. The way we prepare the food, the way we move in the kitchen, and then too, the way we use our senses, the way we see and feel and hear and taste and smell. Our bodily way of knowing our sensuous body, allowing our bodies to just be, be human, be the ancestors, and then be the future.
It allows our youth to see and understand that food is more than just nutrition. It's more than just consumption. It's who we are. We need to reclaim our kitchens and our attitude about being in the kitchen. It's a celebration, it's an honor, and that's going to take a lot of work. It's mental, emotional, spiritual.
Juleyka: Thank you. I really enjoyed the way that you encapsulated those thoughts. And it made me think of this really funny and sad, really, but very telling story that happened to me. So my little boy and I love to bake. We love it. We put icing and sprinkles on everything. It's a thing that we have always enjoyed doing since he could stand basically.
And a few years ago, a friend of the family, I very sort of traditional man, I was telling the story about how we have made something. It was so delicious. We were so happy. And he was like, "The boys shouldn't be in the kitchen. I mean, what are they learning in the kitchen?" And I took a breath. And then I said, "Well, I consider the kitchen a multidisciplinary space. And so they're learning about chemistry, physics, history, they're learning about food preservation. They are learning all kinds of skills and acquiring all kinds of knowledge."
Serrato: Absolutely.
Juleyka: But it also reminds me how the gendering of the kitchen is.
Serrato: Yes.
Juleyka: Really puts my sons at a disadvantage.
Serrato: Yes. Because again, the kitchen is viewed as an inferior space. It has become feminized.
Juleyka: Yeah.
Serrato: It's really problematic because again, those ideas are situated within patriarchal, sexist, white supremacist, imperialist-
Juleyka: And colonialism.
Serrato: ... Colonialism, yes.
Juleyka: I tell my sons all the time, the best cooks in the world are men. So there you go.
Serrato: There you go.
Juleyka: I mean, that has to do a lot with the patriarchy. But I'm like, this is one of the toughest, one of the smartest, intellectually rigorous-
Serrato: Absolutely.
Juleyka: ... That there is.
Serrato: And again, even in the hard sciences, it's very objective. And you're only supposed to use your eyes and your ears. And when you're subjective, you use your entire body. It's an advanced way of knowing, being in the kitchen, you are highly stimulated. And so for somebody to want to downplay it or gender, it really probably even exposes an element of where they themselves need to advance, because it means that they're not using their bodies in the entirety. That's my feminist critique in regards to that kind of way of thinking.
Juleyka: I mean, I have enjoyed this conversation so much, but let's get a little bit down to the more practical aspects of realistically, as a working mom, as someone who is very invested in having my sons have a firm hybrid identity that really strengthens them. And as someone who wants them to know that they come from amazing traditions, what are some ways that you think I can help them on that journey?
Serrato: This could be a kind of sit down, let's learn, let's talk about history. Which I feel is a conversation that should happen anyways, because it is very important for us to understand why we are the way we are.
But I think ultimately something that has been taught to me and told to me over and over again by other amazing indigenous chefs that I have worked alongside, is that, if you really want to get to the nitty gritty and you want folks to tap into that remembering stage, we need to activate that memory. And so how do we do that? They need to taste the food, reintroduce, bring back those foods, particularly those that you grew up with or that your grandmother grew up with, with the science and learning of epigenetics. Most likely those foods that you remember are those foods that your grandmother's, grandmother's grandmother ate as well.
This really speaks to a concept of genetic memory. And so the invitation would be then too, let's activate that. Invite those foods into our home. Maybe not just once a month, but maybe twice a month. Let's start there.
So we begin to open up the palate, right? We begin to develop their palate. And I like to stick with one ingredient and find multiple ways to prepare food with that ingredient. There's a traditional way, and then perhaps there's a more modern way, perhaps one that speaks more to their hybrid identity, their modernity. And so that way it doesn't seem like, "Oh, well this is something foreign. This is something old school. Oh, this is from the old ways." No, yes it is. But this is food that has kept us alive. This is food that wants us to eat it. And if we don't, it's going to go away.
Taste the food, prepare the food, and then that's the next challenge. Because sometimes, to be quite honest, we don't know how to prepare the food, right? And so again, this allows for exploration. This allows for us to trust our bodies, to tell us, well, what is this food? What are the components? What is it starchy? Is it more protein dense? Is it more grainy? And begin to tap into the imagination. And that's one thing that our children are really good at, is thinking outside the box. How can we integrate this in tacos? How can we integrate this in a pastry?
Juleyka: I love that. Thinking about potatoes. My kids love potatoes and plantains, which are all over Nigeria and Dominican machine.
Serrato: Yes, yes.
Juleyka: And they love plantains. And so that's another one that I could really play with. So I love that idea. Claudia, you are an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for bringing wisdom.
Serrato: It's a pleasure.
Juleyka: All right, let's review what we learned from Claudia.
Use your whole body, incorporate ancestral foods into your family's diet, one ingredient at a time, and then experiment. Touch the food, smell it, taste it, and interact with it with all your senses.
Make it a priority. Slow down and make time to prepare food and eat meals with your loved ones. Centering food is centering traditions, rituals and the nourishment of not just our body but our soul.
And remember, reclaim the kitchen, dismantle all narratives and tap into the power of your kitchen. Recognize it and use it as a place for mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual stimulation for you and your entire family.
Thank you for listening and for sharing us. How to Talk to [Mamí & Papí] about Anything is an original production of LWC Studios. Virginia Lora is the show's producer. Trend Lightburn mixed this episode, I'm the creator, Juleyka Lantigua.
On Twitter and Instagram we're @talktomamipapií. Bye everybody. Same place next week.
CITATION:
Lantigua, Juleyka, host. “Passing Down Her Food Heritage In a New Country” How to Talk to [Mamí & Papí] about Anything, LWC Studios., January 16, 2023. TalkToMamiPapi.com.
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