This weeks reading included a mexican cookbook, which contained food recipes and advice for people interested in cooking the food. The cookbook was created in 1898 and sold in San Francisco. Included in the reading were two articlees written by established authors with insight into a different time period and how it affected a certain group of people. The first article was written by Victor Valle. In his writing, he discussed the history and context behing the cookbook and the time period. He talked about a novel written about the conquest of California and the studies done surrounding the topic. There was a part where Valle highlighted the fact that many spanish settlers would make it known that they were not from Mexican descent to avoid and downplay their mestizo ambiguities. They did this because there was a racial bias/ prejudice toward Mexicans and minorities at this time. The main themes of his article was socioeconomics and the class structure of the people in California during this time period; there was also a large portion of the article taliking about the authors family and her background.
The second article was written by Dan Strehl. Like Valle, he did talk a lot about socioeconomic and class structure of Mexicans at this time. He taalked about how this bias affected their recipe books compared to other cookbooks that weren’t about mexican food. Reading about the racial bias was very disheartening frustrating to read. He mentioned her family hisory and her social class. Pinedo was given the oppurtunities that a lot of other hispanic women weren’t afforded due to her class and wealth that she had.
These viewpoints and articles from both authors were very interesting to read. I also enjoyed reading through the cookbook and all the cool recipes.
