Storyteller Crystal Chan share with us, “My story was published by The Guardian in the UK about my mixed race experience. I hope you like it!”
We like it! Thanks for sharing Crystal!
Check out her story in The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/feb/01/mixed-race-childhood-midwest-crystal-chan
Thanks Meso, for submitting your story!
Meso is an exploratory food project that brings people together to craft, sample, and discuss recipes featuring hybridity in food. Our goal is to create a Mexican-Chicagoan cookbook. In this project, we set out to celebrate our hybrid identities and call out to each of us who have felt like we’re in the middle, neither this nor that, but something of two or more, and still distinctly American. There is a reason we chose to communicate through food. For those of us living with mixed-race identity in the United States, it is a fitting metaphor for experience–mixed, concocted, politicized, appropriated, and of course, consumed. Food’s very nature allows for alterations to the recipe, improvements, mistakes, and quickly the “authenticity” of a dish becomes muddled. And, in the end, food brings us together like nothing else. With this and much more in mind, we present Meso, an exploration of Mexican-Chicago cuisine. This project is a test kitchen. Our process is collaborative and inclusive. We seek people who are interested in exploring identity, making connections between foods and cultures, and are not afraid of bizarre, spicy, frothy, heavy, exquisite, charred, or whatever else might describe the concoctions coming from our chefs’ baking dishes. Our participants give honest feedback and input on food, collectively deciding which recipes are published.
Food! It has a way of gathering people….families….friends…communities. Many favorite recipes are accompanied by a story that has been passed down through the generations. A recent blog post, Cooking Genes: Our Culinary Legacy on the Narrative Network, talks about the mixing of recipes that are brought from two different cultures in an a multiracial family. The author’s mother “loved to say that our food was delicious because we were a “mixed-up” family!”
http://yonarrative.com/cooking-genes-culinary-legacy/
This year Gloria Govan and Marlena Attinasi published A Mixed Girls Favorite Recipes.
“This cookbook is a collection of recipes that Gloria Govan and Marlena Attinasi have developed over the years of entertaining and raising their children. The Book is a sampling of our favorite recipes that are from the flavors of the cultures of our childhood, African American, Mexican and Italian. Some of the recipes we have named after our family members to honor them, as they have been an influence in our cooking styles and why we love food and entertaining. We are passionate about family and food being the center of every gathering. ” Find out more about the authors and order their book on their website http://www.mixedgirlsfavorites.com/