Brown Hands, Comida & Love
by Kandace Creel Falcón

Mama’s hands are brown,
her mama’s hands are browner,
mine are tan, a mix
of brown and white.
Dark against the white hands of my partner.

Abuela makes the comida of our people.
Her hands fast at work pounding
flour
or pressing
masa
into tortillas.
A feat mujeres take daily
before the family rises,
at night when familias gather
to eat.

Tacos frying in Crisco,
tostadas baking in the oven,
chile simmering on the stove.
Smells of home made her own
wrinkled
soft
loose-skinned
brown hands.

Mama never cooks much,
the youngest she never got to learn
no need she says. 
Dad doesn’t complain often,
he caught the Mexican girl after all.
Who cares if she can’t make tortillas,
enchiladas,
tacos,
gorditas?
He likes pot roast anyway  

While her brown
soft hands don’t cook,
they do
hold me,
sending her hands to me
in the form of love. 
I see them outstretched,
reaching for her children,
her accomplishments, her prides
and joys.  Shaped in her womb,
molded with her hands and devotion.  

My small
hands,
never as soft
as the women who come before.
Always reaching to tend
and care for,
to work flour,
not to lose
our family recipes. 

Abuela knows this
all by hand,
a pinch here,
a handful there,
no writing down
mom’s hands either.  

Making quesadillas
for white lover
these hands,
my hands
are always browner.

As a Chicana, I see food, culture and cooking as important factors dónde lucho.  My hands and the different kitchens that I learn and cook in become spaces where I critically think through my own notions of family, tradition, home and identity.  I began writing a blog about my experiences in what I call, La Kitchen Chicana, two months ago when the surge of white cooks and chefs flooded popular culture with the recent release of Julia and Julia.  As someone who has always loved food and understood the inherent connection between food and family and culture I became somewhat unnerved by the assumption that the only cooking that should be talked about is European/American cooking.  I appreciate Julia Child’s contribution to “American” cooking and as a pioneer, a woman in a male-dominated industry of irony.  Where men were the experts on cooking, teaching white housewives how to cook in their own homes.  She did pave the way for food entertainers, and who doesn’t love the Food Network?  But even in 2009, how many Chicanas are on the Food Network?  Ninguna.  How many are cooking on PBS?  Ninguna.  How many are food blogging?  Una?  If I’m not the only one, please tell me.  I did a google search and came up with my own blog.  I would love to build some community around these issues: brown hands in brown kitchens.

I know my abuela never watched Julia Child, nor did my mama or my aunts have a very special place for her in their hearts.  Instead, they were too busy organizing taco nights, which took place once a week at one of the two restaurants in Greenleaf, Kansas for extra income.  My tías recount those days as hard, making tons of pan-fried tacos for a town full of white folks.  I’m not exaggerating, they were the only Mexican/American family and the only people of color in the whole town.  I shake my head thinking about how eager those white folks must have been to eat my abuela’s, mi familia’s absolutely delicious tacos.  Yet when my family first moved into town, a little old white lady tried to start a petition to expel the only brown family from Greenleaf.  So food has always been an important marker of my cultura, yet I have an uneasy relationship with what I see as a colonization of our cultura through our food.  Imagining the women of my family slaving over pans of crackling grease in the middle of a Kansas summer for the white town folk to enjoy “authentic” tacos will do that to a person.  However, I also feel it is important to share these things, because they are ours, and when we don’t give words to them the white folk gobbling down our tacos that took hours to prepare don’t have to think twice about why they taste so good. 

La Kitchen Chicana is not just a place for me to share my recipes, but it is a space to begin to discuss some of these issues.  What becomes of familial traditions when you share them with the world on the Internet?  Are posting recipes that I make with love, that are a part of me, that course through my veins, enough to start the conversation with people about the importance of honoring tradition, cultura, family, food and anti-racist practices around food consumption?  I hope so. I started this conversation on my blog and will continue to intersperse it within recipes as a way of not sugar-coating difficult discussions about race and/or culture, but rather as a way of feeding souls so that they can begin to explore these issues with full bellies.  I am going to keep working on these discussions through my blog while also honoring all of the delicious foods that I have learned to make from the women in my family, and the meals I make for my own family.  My light brown hands stir pots and allow my thoughts on so many things (not just around kitchen or food issues) simmer.  Until then, take a look at the two Chicana-inspired dishes, I recently cooked up in my cocina but only if you promise to think about some of these issues while you cook and eat them.

Chicana Cous Cous Salad

Green Chile Turkey Burgers

A step-by-step guide to making these two delicious treats.

 

Kandace Creel Falcón was born in Kansas but grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is currently a Doctoral Candidate in Feminist Studies at the University of Minnesota.  Her research focuses on Midwest Mexican American women’s oral histories as a means to explore the importance of stories and storytelling for Chicana/o communities. She is also the Co-Facilitator of the community blog – Women of Color: Writing http://blog.lib.umn.edu/leexx065/writingmulticulturalidentity/.