Rafael Climent-Espino & Ana M. Gomez-Bravo 
Food, Texts, and Cultures in Latin America and Spain 

The fourteen essays in
Food, Texts, and Cultures in Latin America and Spain showcase the eye-opening potential of a food lens within colonial studies, ethnic and racial studies, gender and sexuality studies, and studies of power dynamics, nationalisms and nation building, theories of embodiment, and identity. In short,
Food, Texts, and Cultures in Latin America and Spain grapples with an emerging field in need of a foundational text, and does so from multiple angles.

The studies span from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century, and the contributing scholars occupy diverse fields within Latin American and Hispanic Studies. As such, their essays showcase eclectic critical and theoretical approaches to the subject of Latin American and Iberian food.

Food, Texts, and Cultures in Latin America and Spain also introduces the first English-language publication of works from such award-winning scholars as Adolfo Castañón of the Mexican Academy of Language; Sergio Ramírez, winner of the 2017 Miguel de Cervantes Prize in Literature; and Carmen Simón Palmer, winner of the 2015 Julián Marías Prize for Research.

Table of Content

Introduction: Food Studies in Latin American and Spanish Contexts

1. Food, Blood, and a Jewish Raza in Fifteenth-Century Spain, by Ana M. Gómez-Bravo

2. Taste and Taxonomy of Native Food in Hispanic America: 1492–1640, by Gregorio Saldarriaga Escobar

3. Still Life, Food, and Fiction: Diversions from the Colonial Baroque, by Rodrigo Labriola

4. Furniture and Equipment in the Royal Kitchens of Early Modern Spain, by Carolyn A. Nadeau

5. Enlightened Meals: Literary Perspectives on Food in Eighteenth-Century Spain, by María Ángeles Pérez Samper

6. Madrid: Cuisine as Cultural Melting Pot, by María del Carmen Simón Palmer

7. Beyond the Recipes: Authorship, Text, and Context in Canonical Spanish Cookbooks, by María Paz Moreno

8. Cooks and Ladies: The Writing of Culinary Knowledge in Argentina in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, by Paula Caldo

9. The Evolution of Mexican Cuisine: Five Gastronomical Seasons, Mole, Pozole, Tamal, Tortilla, and Chile Relleno, by Adolfo Castañón

10. What the Palate Knows: Nicaragua’s Culinary Cultures, by Sergio Ramírez

11. A Gastrocritical Reading of Miguel Ángel Asturias’s Early Narrative:
Legends of Guatemala,
The President, and
Men of Maize, by Rafael Climent-Espino

12. On Hunger and Brazilian Literature, by Sabrina Sedlmayer

13. Food in Recent Cuban Literature (1990–2016): From Hero in the Special Period Fiction to Almost Zero in the Generation Zero, by Rita De Maeseneer

Index

About the author

Ana M. Gómez-Bravo is professor of Spanish at the University of Washington. Her most recent book is Comida y cultura en el mundo hispánico.