Kitchenspace : women, fiestas, and everyday life in central Mexico / Maria Elisa Christie ; foreword by Mary Weismantel.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Christie, Maria Elisa.

Contributor:

Lachs-Adler Family Endowed Fund for Collection Development.

Series:

Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long series in Latin American and Latino art and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Fasts and feasts--Mexico.

Fasts and feasts.

Kitchens--Mexico.

Kitchens.

Social networks.

Mexico--Social life and customs.

Mexico.

Manners and customs.

Social networks--Mexico.

Women--Mexico--Social conditions.

Women.

Social conditions.

Physical Description:

xxiv, 308 pages : illustrations, map ; 24 cm.

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Austin : University of Texas Press, 2008.

Summary:

Throughout the world, the kitchen is the heart of family and community life. Yet, while everyone has a story to tell about their grandmother's kitchen, the myriad activities that go on in this usually female world are often devalued, and little scholarly attention has been paid to this crucial space in which family, gender, and community relations are forged and maintained. To give the kitchen the prominence and respect it merits, Maria Elisa Christie here offers a pioneering ethnography of kitchenspace in three central Mexican communities, Xochimilco, Ocotepec, and Tetecala.

Christie coined the term "kitchenspace" to encompass both the inside kitchen area in which everyday meals for the family are made and the larger outside cooking area in which elaborate meals for community fiestas are prepared by many women working together. She explores how both kinds of meal preparation create bonds among family and community members. In particular, she shows how women's work in preparing food for fiestas gives women status in their communities and creates social networks of reciprocal obligation. In a culture rigidly stratified by gender, Christie concludes, kitchenspace gives women a source of power and a place in which to transmit the traditions and beliefs of older generations through quasi-sacramental food rites.

Contents:

Foreword: At the kitchen table / Mary Weismantel

Preface

Acknowledgments

A taste of three places

Introduction

Points of departure

Women of the circle

Xochimilco: "Short on days to celebrate our fiestas"

Ocotepec: "Not letting the city eat this town up"

Tetecala: "Here mangos used to be like gold"

Kitchenspace narratives

Women of Tetecala: "You have to be ingenious in the kitchen!"

Women of Xochimilco: "It is better for the pots to awaken upside down"

Women of Ocotepec: "We used to have a lot of pigs"

Food for thought

Notes

Glossary

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [283]-294) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Lachs-Adler Family Endowed Fund for Collection Development.

ISBN:

9780292717947

0292717946

OCLC:

173299122