Latin@s’ Presence in the Food Industry takes the holistic culinary approach of bringing together multidisciplinary criticism to explore the diverse, and not always readily apparent, ways that Latin@s relate to food and the food industry.
The networks Latin@s create, the types of identities they fashion through food, and their relationship to the US food industry are analyzed to understand Latin@s as active creators of food-based communities, as distinctive cultural representations, and as professionals. This vibrant new collection acknowledges issues of labor conditions, economic politics, and immigration laws—structural vulnerabilities that certainly cannot be ignored—and strives to understand more fully the active and conscious ways that Latina@s create spaces to maneuver global and local food systems.
Meredith E. Abarca is associate professor of literature and food studies at the University of Texas at El Paso. She is the author of Voices in the Kitchen and coeditor of Rethinking Chicana/o Literature through Food.
Consuelo Carr Salas is a fourth-year doctoral student at the University of Texas at El Paso. Her research focuses on the rhetoric of visual food advertisements by bridging the areas of rhetoric and food studies.
“A probing and comprehensive volume that will captivate scholars from a wide variety of fields.”
—Julia Ehrhardt, University of Oklahoma
“This compelling collection demonstrates how transnational Latinidades are constructed and reproduced in embodied, day-to-day relationships with the food industry. The eleven essays here draw from the disciplines of history, anthropology, literary studies, and cultural studies to explore how Latin@s in the U.S.A., Mexico, and the Caribbean generate complex cultural capital and meaning as food makers and creators, producers and providers, sellers and marketers, consumers, transporters, importers, laborers, or any of these in combination. The collection provides insights into the pragmatic circumstantial or situational Latin@ food systems that operate in tandem with, but often outside the notice of, globally and locally ‘recognized’ food industries. Latin@s’ Presence in the Food Industry merits a wide readership across Foodways studies and Latin@ studies alike.”
—Paul Allatson, author of Key Terms in Latino/a Cultural and Literary Studies
Food and Foodways, a new series from the University of Arkansas Press, explores historical and contemporary issues in global food studies. We are committed to telling lesser known food stories and to representing a diverse set of voices. Our strength is works in the humanities and social sciences that use food as a lens to examine broader, social, cultural, environmental, ethical, and economic issues. In addition to scholarly books, we publish creative nonfiction that explores the sensory dimensions of consumption and celebrates food as evidence of human creativity and innovation.
Adopted at: California State University Los Angeles
Course: LAS 5900 Interdisciplinary Seminar: Latin American Studies
Course Description: Interdisciplinary investigation and discussion of selected Latin American topics
Professor: Enrique Ochoa
Term: Spring 2023
