Food Fight!

Millennial Mestizaje Meets the Culinary Marketplace

By Paloma Martinez-Cruz

SERIES: Latinx Pop Culture

The University of Arizona Press

From the racial defamation and mocking tone of “Mexican” restaurants geared toward the Anglo customer to the high-end Latin-inspired eateries with Anglo chefs who give the impression that the food was something unattended or poorly handled that they “discovered” or “rescued” from actual Latinos, the dilemma of how to make ethical choices in food production and consumption is always as close as the kitchen recipe, coffee pot, or table grape.

In Food Fight! author Paloma Martinez-Cruz takes us on a Chicanx gastronomic journey that is powerful and humorous. Martinez-Cruz tackles head on the real-world politics of food production from the exploitation of farmworkers to the appropriation of Latinx bodies and culture, and takes us right into transformative eateries that offer a homegrown, mestiza consciousness.

The hard-hitting essays in Food Fight! bring a mestiza critique to today’s pressing discussions of labeling, identity, and imaging in marketing and dining. Not just about food, restaurants, and coffee, this volume employs a decolonial approach and engaging voice to interrogate ways that mestizo, Indigenous, and Latinx peoples are objectified in mainstream ideology and imaginary.

'For scholars looking to reframe how we think about the links between mestizaje, feminism, decolonization, farming, and the foods we make and eat, Martinez-Cruz offers a vibrant and necessary range of pathways to pursue.'--Jeannette Vaught, New Mexico Historical Review

‘Every essay will fill a reader—millennial mestizo or just plain old Chicano—with joyous smiles at the zingers. Advertencia! This book is not one for idle consumption, it’s not fast food. Paloma Martinez-Cruz dishes up a scholarly dissertation of substantial complexity with a heaping portion of humor, verbal sleight-of-hand, and barely-restrained ire.’—La Bloga

‘Food Fight! is well written and thought provoking. No other book has the same take, particularly on the human-rights aspect of food production, distribution, and marketing. It is also a bracing call for action on the individual and community levels.’—María Acosta Cruz, Department of Language, Literature, and Culture, Clark University

‘This book is indispensable for the times—a millennial mestiza outlook on the cultural contact zones where Chicana/o/x and Latina/o/x people challenge, reimagine, and create a sense of self in their everyday lives.’—Julia E. Curry, Chicana and Chicano Studies Department, San José State University

Paloma Martinez-Cruz is an associate professor of Latinx cultural studies at The Ohio State University. She is the author of Women and Knowledge in Mesoamerica: From East L.A. to Anahuac.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction: A Close Fight
1. Farmworker-to-Table Mexican: Decolonizing Haute Cuisine
2. On Cinco de Drinko and Jimmiechangas: Culinary Brownface in the Rust Belt Midwest
3. Homegirl Café: La Conciencia Mestiza as Culinary Counterstory
4. From Juan Valdez to Third Wave Cafés: Lattes and Latinidad in the Marketplace
Conclusion: Big Vehicle Food Fight

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Related Titles