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Latinx Pop Culture
Food Fight!: Millennial Mestizaje Meets the Culinary Marketplace
From the racial defamation and mocking tone of “Mexican” restaurants geared toward the Anglo customer to the high-end Latin-inspired eateries with Anglo chefs who give the impression that the food was something unattended or poorly handled that they “discovered” or “rescued” from actual Latinos, the dilemma of how to make ethical choices in food production and consumption is always as close as the kitchen recipe, coffee pot, or table grape.
In Food Fight! author Paloma Martinez-Cruz takes us on a Chicanx gastronomic journey that is powerful and humorous. Martinez-Cruz tackles head on the real-world politics of food production from the exploitation of farmworkers to the appropriation of Latinx bodies and culture, and takes us right into transformative eateries that offer a homegrown, mestiza consciousness.
The hard-hitting essays in Food Fight! bring a mestiza critique to today’s pressing discussions of labeling, identity, and imaging in marketing and dining. Not just about food, restaurants, and coffee, this volume employs a decolonial approach and engaging voice to interrogate ways that mestizo, Indigenous, and Latinx peoples are objectified in mainstream ideology and imaginary.
In Food Fight! author Paloma Martinez-Cruz takes us on a Chicanx gastronomic journey that is powerful and humorous. Martinez-Cruz tackles head on the real-world politics of food production from the exploitation of farmworkers to the appropriation of Latinx bodies and culture, and takes us right into transformative eateries that offer a homegrown, mestiza consciousness.
The hard-hitting essays in Food Fight! bring a mestiza critique to today’s pressing discussions of labeling, identity, and imaging in marketing and dining. Not just about food, restaurants, and coffee, this volume employs a decolonial approach and engaging voice to interrogate ways that mestizo, Indigenous, and Latinx peoples are objectified in mainstream ideology and imaginary.
- GenresFoodNonfiction
157 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 19, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 24, 2020
Really enjoyed this collection of essays examining how to decolonize what the author refers to as "Latinidad" exploitation in a variety of culinary lenses. She uses the term "Latinidad" to very specifically encompass the idea of a collective Latinx identity specifically shaped by socioeconomic policies in the United States. And by "mestizaje", she is referring to Latinx, Chicanx, Central American, and South American identities that encompass indigeneity.
There are a lot of terms in this book, and a lot of defining.
That took me a hot minute to get used to, but the more I read, the more I appreciated the author's thorough grounding of her work; not just in precisely defining each term she uses, but in defining each with reference to the other scholars whose work she builds on.
That style of grounding suffuses the whole book. In each piece, Martínez-Cruz brings in the work of other scholars not just as supports for her own points, but as deep background for the way she built each lens. It's a cumulative type of scholarship which feels ultimately much stronger than simply stating each point and backing it up with evidence from the (in this case real-world) text. It's a dense and complicated type of scholarship, but very enlightening.
By dense and complicated, I mean that there were a couple of sentences and ideas that were a little above what I could understand. For me, using "a framework of radical feminist epistemology to interpret women's transmission of hemispheric foodways" doesn't parse easily.
At the same time, the author's fieldwork in cafés, reading menus and Yelp reviews, and especially in exploring white-owned and operated Mexican restaurants was intriguing and refreshing. I only wished there was more of it. (As has been mentioned, this volume's a slim 122 pages, but with a rich bibliography and notes section at the end.)
Even with the layers of dense scholarship, Martínez-Cruz presents exciting new ideas. For instance, the interpreting Mexican restaurants which lack Mexican voices in power in the kitchen or ownership roles as not just subtly off, but as enacting a form of "brownface":
Also she won my heart with the description of Sammy Hagar as "the occasional singer of the band Van Halen". Medic!
Anyway, I enjoyed it immensely. I only didn't give it five stars because occasionally it did wander so far into dense scholarship that I couldn't understand if I was lost or if the book had lost me. Did I need a condensed history of how coffee was discovered in order to grasp what's racist about hanging portraits of mestizaje in cafés that otherwise have subtly white-focused advertising and presentation? Not really, but I did need to read this book.
There are a lot of terms in this book, and a lot of defining.
That took me a hot minute to get used to, but the more I read, the more I appreciated the author's thorough grounding of her work; not just in precisely defining each term she uses, but in defining each with reference to the other scholars whose work she builds on.
That style of grounding suffuses the whole book. In each piece, Martínez-Cruz brings in the work of other scholars not just as supports for her own points, but as deep background for the way she built each lens. It's a cumulative type of scholarship which feels ultimately much stronger than simply stating each point and backing it up with evidence from the (in this case real-world) text. It's a dense and complicated type of scholarship, but very enlightening.
By dense and complicated, I mean that there were a couple of sentences and ideas that were a little above what I could understand. For me, using "a framework of radical feminist epistemology to interpret women's transmission of hemispheric foodways" doesn't parse easily.
At the same time, the author's fieldwork in cafés, reading menus and Yelp reviews, and especially in exploring white-owned and operated Mexican restaurants was intriguing and refreshing. I only wished there was more of it. (As has been mentioned, this volume's a slim 122 pages, but with a rich bibliography and notes section at the end.)
Even with the layers of dense scholarship, Martínez-Cruz presents exciting new ideas. For instance, the interpreting Mexican restaurants which lack Mexican voices in power in the kitchen or ownership roles as not just subtly off, but as enacting a form of "brownface":
...such Mexican restaurants -- in their food preparations, interior designs, and marketing materials -- are not imitations of Mexican eating and dining conventions but rather, like with minstrelsy, imitations of the Mexican imitation of Western dining. The vast array of clichés and stereotypes surrounding Midwest Mexican food presentations suggests to consumers that they have crossed a cultural border into a new gastronomic geography, when in fact they are faithfully replicating a culinary framework based on Taco Bell and Chi-Chi's.
Also she won my heart with the description of Sammy Hagar as "the occasional singer of the band Van Halen". Medic!
Anyway, I enjoyed it immensely. I only didn't give it five stars because occasionally it did wander so far into dense scholarship that I couldn't understand if I was lost or if the book had lost me. Did I need a condensed history of how coffee was discovered in order to grasp what's racist about hanging portraits of mestizaje in cafés that otherwise have subtly white-focused advertising and presentation? Not really, but I did need to read this book.
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July 14, 2019This book is for coffee-sippers, especially those who have felt there's just something off about the paternalistic framing of fair-trade marketing but who weren't able to put their finger on it (or didn't make the effort to). This book is for patrons of Mexican restaurant food chains (especially in the Midwest), who have noticed and/or participated in sombrero birthday hat parties. This book is for Columbusites who've been to MadMex or Condado but never to any of the 80-sum taquerías/taco trucks. For any former student of the author's (like myself) who took one or more of her classes and thought, damn, she knows what she's talking about. For anyone who already cares or wants to pay more attention to how they spend their consumer dollar. For environmentalists and human rights activists. For those baffled or unaware of the context of CIW protests. For anyone who eats, really.
In sum, this book is for everyone. It's concise (my copy is just 122 pages, excluding the Notes & Index), timely, and well-worth the read.
In sum, this book is for everyone. It's concise (my copy is just 122 pages, excluding the Notes & Index), timely, and well-worth the read.
February 19, 2026
🌟 4.5/5
One of my favorite classes in my undergrad was with this professor, and reading her book felt like getting a much deeper understanding of the themes of her class. I enjoyed digging deep into the intersection of food justice, culture, sustainability, and colonialism. Would love to read more literature in this area.
One of my favorite classes in my undergrad was with this professor, and reading her book felt like getting a much deeper understanding of the themes of her class. I enjoyed digging deep into the intersection of food justice, culture, sustainability, and colonialism. Would love to read more literature in this area.
May 28, 2025
Really loved this collection covering often side-stepped issues in food conversations, from labor rights and fair-washing to "authenticity" and soft colonialism. Would have been excellent source material for my masters program in nutrition.
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June 21, 2023Excellent book
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews