If you are interested in food writing, this Community Classroom Cultural Immersion will provide you with a chance to join teacher, writer, and artist Melani “Mele” Martinez for a three hour workshop.
This workshop will explore the connections between food and language to discover how food work translates into narrative work. Students will share a hearth full of both flavor and story. “Recipes have a story arc,” and “’like a short story, a good recipe can put us in a delightful trance,” writes Bee Wilson. In “The Pleasures of Reading Recipes,” Wilson explores the narrative qualities of food preparation and recipe writing. In her lecture, “We Eat What We Are,” folklorist Maribel Alvarez says food is such an important part of our lives that it “penetrates our speech in the form of metaphor.” She shares the claim of anthropologist Mary Douglas—we must look at food as a system of communication, as something that is intrinsically symbolic.
In short excerpts, students will read famed food writers like Anthony Bourdain and Ruth Reichl as well as lesser-recognized food story-tellers who have contributed songs, prayers, or those little recipe boxes tucked away in our pantries for generations. Together, we will make food and create story, mingling the five senses in this hands-on, metaphor-building writing course.