Mujeres del Recetario Nacional: Stories of Women's Cultural Stewardship in the Puerto Rican Kitchen

The formation of a national cuisine and cookbook is a major symbol of national identity and is a representation of a people who have established shared foodways and developed a particular culinary palate and vocabulary. But these recipes are not just dishes, they are a way of living. These recipes are not just nourishment for the body, but for the soul. Recipes can call forth an entire history of a people if one is willing to savor the stories hidden in a mouthful of plátano maduro. Food can also serve to understand the impacts of colonization, globalization, and the ebbs and flows of culture. But preparing and consuming culturally significant foods has the potential to either illuminate or obscure that history. In this study I examine culinary social practices of puertorriqueñas in relation to cultural identities, histories, and colonization. I use settler and neo-colonial theory and qualitative research methods to unearth and attend to cultural history and colonial trauma. Central to this inquiry lie the questions 1) What stories do Puerto Rican culinary traditions hold? 2) How are these culinary traditions a reflection of ethnic mestizaje and forgotten colonial wounds? 3) And what would a decolonial recetario look like? To understand these aspects of Puerto Rico’s national cuisine I turn to cookbooks, recipe videos, and Puerto Rican women. Although they are vital to the continuity of these cultural practices there is a scarcity of literature exploring how women perform cultural stewardship through food.