Winner of the 2006 Andrés Bello Award for Memory and Ibero-American Thought
In this evocatively written book, Germán Patiño Ossa presents the cultural universe and national identities of Colombia through the lens of traditional cuisine. Focusing on the Cauca Valley, a fertile area in southwestern Colombia where Spanish, Native American, and African communities converged over the centuries, Patiño Ossa studies the food of these communities and its place in the region's culture.
Using Jorge Isaacs's nineteenth-century Romantic novel María as a realistic source for cultural practices among Colombia's slaveholding elite, Patiño Ossa examines cooking, kitchens, and the division of labor; flora and fauna; agriculture, hunting, and fishing; hospitality; slavery; and literature. Through the community of Afro-descendants who appear in Isaacs's novel, Patiño Ossa shows how this culinary culture, originating in the cookstoves used by female black slaves, resulted in the Creole fusions that characterize this geographical region of Latin America.Cooking and food, as Patiño Ossa eloquently demonstrates, are essential for us to understand the process of the formation of culture and the origins, evolution, and effects of transculturation.
Innovative, engaging, and accompanied by an introductory preface by the author, this English-language edition of Patiño Ossa's prizewinning book is a model for food and cultural studies that will appeal to scholars, students, and the intellectually curious.
About the Author: Born and raised in Colombia's coastal region, Germán Patiño Ossa was a newspaper columnist, novelist, university professor, and cultural activist. Along with Fogón de negros, Patiño Ossa was the author of the prizewinning Herr Simmonds y otras historias del Valle del Cauca. Jonathan Tittler is Professor Emeritus of Hispanic Studies at Rutgers University. He has translated nine Spanish American novels, including Manuel Zapata Olivella's Changó, the Biggest Badass, which was awarded honorable mention for the best translation of a literary work by the MLA in 2011.
