Making an American Family: A Recipe in Five Generations
What makes a family "American"?
What makes a family "American"?
What makes a family "American"?
Available in all formats, including AudioBook
What makes a family "American"?
What makes a family "American"?
Making an American Family: A Recipe in Five Generations is the progressive story of one family, told through five generations. Beginning with their journey into the United States during the Mexican Revolution, and culminating with their posterity, attending school online during the COVID19 pandemic, the unique chorus of voices invites the reader into a multi-sensorial experience of memory.
At first glance, this family memoir is a unique culinary journey, with food as an important part of memory. Upon closer examination, it's a picture of erasure and homogenization through generations, as illustrated by faded pictures in the cover. Rodriguez is faithful to show how her immigrant family, like most families who came from Mexico in the early 20th century, were systematically stripped of their language, heritage, culture, and their given names, all for the price of “becoming American” in the USA. With passion and precision, Rodriguez serves the reader a family feast of memories, a microcosm of the American family.
Praise for Making an American Family
Praise for Making an American Family
Praise for Making an American Family
Keep the family together" were the parting words of Janet Rodriguez's grandmother. And Rodriguez has done just that with her luminous account of five generations of her family-she has kept the family together. Through their beginnings in Mexico, to building a new life in California's Central Valley, and reckoning with a rapidly changing national landscape, Rodriguez's account of her family truly tells the story of every American family, one steeped in sacrifice, hope, and love. Part memoir, part oral history, and part personal exploration on the part of a bi-ethnic woman who never felt Mexican enough, Making an American Family is a love letter to those who have gone, and a prayer for those still to come.
~ Elizabeth Gonzalez James, author of Mona at Sea and The Bullet Swallower
Praise for Making an American Family
Praise for Making an American Family
Janet Rodriguez has poured her whole heart—all her love, all her longing, all her questions, all her tremendous talent—into this beautiful, delicious, deeply moving exploration of family and culture and home, investigating what is lost through assimilation, what is gained when family sticks together. This feast of a book, this ofrenda of a book, this treasure of a book, is as nourishing and soul-warming as one of Rodriguez’s grandmother’s tortillas served fresh from the comal, “slathered in butter, folded into a triangle, put into a napkin, and placed in your hand. Love.”
~Gayle Brandeis,
author of Many Restless Concerns, and The Art of Misdiagnosis
Canta, no llores...Sing, don't cry,” a wonderful, old Mexican song, describes this amazing family memoir. Janet Rodriguez follows her family's line to five generations, including family trees, recipes from her ancestors, and the most marvelous photos. And los cuentos, the stories, bring each generation to la vida on the page- MUCHAS BRAVAS, el amor, el canto song has been passed on.
~Alma Luz Villanueva,
author of Song of The Golden Scorpion and Gracias