CULTURE SPRINGS FROM FOOD: COOKING AS ARCHIVING
Our newest Starting Conversations series is in partnership with Three Sisters Kitchen in Albuquerque, NM, a nonprofit organization focused on nourishing each other from the ground up. The discussion series is based on the idea that “culture springs from food” and each session will explore the unique relationship between food and culture in New Mexico, bringing together voices including farmers, chefs, local experts, artists, historians, and academics, among others.
For our first episode “Cooking as Archiving” we invited Josie Lopez, Curator at Albuquerque Museum, Andi Murphy, food journalist and host of the Toasted Sister Podcast, and Eric Romero, Professor at NM Highlands University to discuss how culture is preserved and passed down through food and cooking. He is also the organizer of the Digital Matanza with Manitos Community Memory Project. In this discussion, our guests pondered the current definition of “archive” and ways that definition is limiting and could be expanded to incorporate foodways from history and the present.
SHIKATAGANAI — IT CAN’T BE HELPED
By Shelley Takeuchi
“May is now designated as Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month.”
LOVING LA LLORONA
By Rica Maestas
“A nostalgic tie to childhood, La Llorona was one of the first stories I remember hearing, sitting under the tree in my grandmother’s yard.”
TEACHER WARRIOR
By Ninabah Davis
“In the month of May we celebrate Mother’s Day to honor our mothers, grandmothers and aunts, and for this Mother’s Day I would like to share a story about my late paternal Grandmother who was named Chábáh Davis Watson.”
MOTHER’S DAY 2019
By Denise Chávez
“I imagine my mother Delfina listening intently to her transistor radio wherever she is now, in the Great Unknown humming Bendito surrounded by the Ancestors.”
FISH NOT FLESH: SYMBOLISM OF THE NEW MEXICO LENTEN FEAST
By Vanessa Baca
“Ultimately, it is the return to life after the darkness of death that is at the heart of Lent and Easter Sunday, and it is this contrast that is represented in the food eaten by New Mexico Catholics.”
SOY MAGDELENA… Y HE PECADO
By Diana Velazco
“Represento a toda mujer
Que en el mundo se le ha juzgado;
Por prejuicios o por genero,
Por machismo o egoismo.”
CARLOS, PRIETO, AND RAMIRO COME TO HOE THE MILPA
By Levi Romero
“Hay más tiempo que vida, my cousin would often say.
And maybe he was right, although sometimes I have a hard time
Grasping what he meant, there is more time than life.”
INTERNATIONAL JAZZ DAY: JAZZ AND DEMOCRACY
By Andy Kingston
“The irony was not lost on many artists that a nation struggling with racial segregation at home should turn to those denied full participation in American democracy as ambassadors of American ideals abroad.”
COMMUNITY VISIONS — CINEMATIC NARRATIVES BY WOMEN
By Ariel Dougherty
“In intervening decades too few opportunities in the U.S. have existed for women to gain support for narrative filmmaking.”