Rethinking Chicana/o Literature through Food / Literatures of the Americas (PDF)

Meredith E. Abarca, University of Texas, El Paso, USA
Paul Allatson, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
Laura P. Alonso Gallo, Barry University, Miami, USA
Suzanne Bost, Loyola University, Chicago, USA
Norma E. Cantú, University of Missouri-Kansas City, USA
Norma L. Cárdenas, Oregon State University, USA
Elizabeth Lee Steere, University of West Georgia, USA
Mimi Reisel Gladstein, University of Texas, El Paso, USA
Nieves Pascual, University of Jaén, Spain
Heather Salter, Northwestern State University of Louisiana, USA
Edith Vásquez, Pitzer College, USA
Irene Vásquez, University of New Mexico, USA

"Editors Nieves Pascual Soler and Meredith E. Abarca offer in their collection, Rethinking Chicana/o Literature through Food: Postnational Appetites, a cornucopia of exceptional essays that apply their newly constructed theoretical paradigm based on food and food consciousness in the analysis and hermeneutics of Chicano/a literary production. The authors brilliantly posit that food preparation and consumption extant in literary discourse is a vehicle of communication encoding various acts of rebellion against marginalization and exclusion in a patriarchal nation. Foodways, Soler and Abarca splendidly and provocatively assert, provide a means of 'redefining subjectivities in postnational cultures.' This is a must-read scholarly work for those interested in the construction of national and postnational subjectivities." - María Herrera-Sobek, Associate Vice Chancellor, Professor of Chicana/o Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA

"Covering a diverse range of writers and texts, this collection is a valuable contribution to food studies and literary scholarship that has overlooked the presence of food and consumption in Chicana/o writing. Abarca and Pascual Soler provide a much-needed study on how food in Chicana/o literature creates and represents consciousness/concientización, thus shifting the Anzaldúan border paradigm from an 'open wound' to an 'open mouth.' A study like this was long overdue." - Cristina Herrera, Associate Professor of Chicano and Latin American Studies, California State University, Fresno, USA