Mindful bites: culinary acts of love, resistance, and hope

Ethnic culinary research can be a platform for understanding how systems o f oppression impact communities o f color, as well as give Filipina/o communities the opportunity to share their cultural wealth (by means of documenting oral histories). For this research, cultural hegemony will be viewed through a lens of culinary experiences focusing on exploitation through institutional (cultural food colonialism), interpersonal (culinary multiculturalism), and internal (cultural estrangement) systems o f oppressions. Furthermore, the counter-narratives o f the interviewees in response to the above forms of exploitation will be claimed as cultural wealth. Essentially, this research proposes that if we are critically conscious about the food we pick, prepare, present, and consume, the kitchen becomes a site o f resistance and the preparation o f food becomes an act of resistance. This research is intent on contributing to the growing body o f critical perspectives about understanding our communities’ connections to food.