Beyond the Food Court
An Anthology of Literary Cuisines
- Publisher
- Laberinto Press
- Initial publish date
- Oct 2020
- Category
- General
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781777085902
- Publish Date
- Oct 2020
- List Price
- $23.00
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781777085933
- Publish Date
- Oct 2020
- List Price
- $8.00
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Description
*The present anthology comprises 14 creative non-fiction essays on the topic of food by professional hyphen-canadian writers. The authors behind this anthology have studied their own hungers, to paraphrase American food writer M.F.K. Fisher. Their vivid re-telling of past culinary experiences bears little resemblance to the—now more than ever—sanitized version of the food court. It becomes a collective exercise of remembering and creating new memories as your eyes settle on the words Masgouf, asado, Injera, or ajiaco. Both food and speech are experienced in the mouth, as Peter Midgley’s piece on his family connection to Afrikaans cuisine and Adriana Oniţă’s testimony of learning to make maternal Romanian dishes attest. What makes these essays relevant is their Canadianness, and I am not referring to an immutable, sterile notion of national identity. Many Canadians speak and write in a second, and sometimes third language, as do some of the contributors. Compiling this anthology satiates our hunger to open up the field of CanLit. *Please see below for the updated Spring 2024 UTP Specials terms: UTP Frontlist Special Special: 50+ frontlist titles Discount: 45% Code: 1FRN Conditions: One order per code. Ends March 30th, 2024. Combinable across all Ampersand’s participating UTP publishers. UTP Backlist Special Special: 50+ backlist titles Discount: 47% Code: BAC6 Conditions: One order per code. Ends December 31st, 2023. Combinable across all Ampersand’s participating UTP publishers. Special: 50+ backlist titles Discount: 47% Code: BAC7 Conditions: One order per code. Starts January 1st, 2024. Ends December 31st, 2024. Combinable across all Ampersand’s participating UTP publishers.
About the author
Contributor Notes
Yasser Abdellatif is a writer and poet from Cairo, Egypt. He has lived and worked in Edmonton since 2010. He has published four fiction books, two poetry collections, and translated many literary works from French and English into Arabic. He writes mainly in Arabic although his works have been translated into English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. He has participated in literary events and festivals in France, Spain, Colombia, Germany, Netherlands, Malta, and United Arab Emirates. Abdellatif was a resident of the International Writing Program (IWP) at the University of Iowa in 2009. His debut novel, Law of Inheritance (2002), won the Sawiris Prize in 2005 in the young writers’ category. His collection of short stories, Jonah in the Belly of the Whale, won the same prize in the category of prominent writers in 2011.
Mila Bongco-Philipzig was born in Manila, Philippines and arrived in Edmonton in 1984 with a grant for graduate studies at the University of Alberta. After completing her master’s, she moved to Germany on a scholarship towards a PhD. In Munich, she met her husband and they have one son. Mila and her family have lived in various places around the globe, preferring to be on the road experiencing various cultures and perspectives rather than being tied down with a mortgage. This changed in 2007 when they decided to call Edmonton home in order to provide a more predictable environment for their son, and to enable him to form long-term friendships. Mila works at Stantec and is active in the community. In 2016, she published two bilingual children’s books (Pilipino and English), both reflecting her interests in family, travel, multiculturalism, and diversity.
Leilei Chen Dr. Leilei Chen is a scholar, writer, and literary translator. She wrote Reorienting China: Travel Writing and Cross-cultural Understanding (University of Regina Press, 2016) and translated Steven Grosby's Nationalism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press) into Chinese (Yilin Press, 2017). Her memoir/ travel writing, essays, and poetry translations appear in Home: Stories Connecting Us All (2017) and Looking Back, Moving Forward (Mawenzi House, Toronto, 2019), The Polyglot, Literary Review of Canada, Women of China, The Chinese Journal, and Latitude 53. She teaches at the University of Alberta.
Luciana Erregue-Sacchi is a Canadian-Argentinian art historian, writer, and editor. Her poetry and creative non-fiction essays have appeared in the anthologies Looking Back, Moving Forward (Mawenzi House, 2018), Relatos Entrecruzados (Editorial Mapalé, 2020), and in blogs and literary magazines worldwide. Luciana guest edited The Polyglot magazine’s ekphrastic issue, “CanLit: Curating our Canons” (Spring 2018). In 2019, Luciana was the Edmonton Arts Council Artist in Residence, and was selected as part of the Literary Arts cohort at the Banff Centre. Luciana writes on her blog, SpectatorCurator, about her life as an art historian. This volume is her first endeavour as part of her activism, for diversity in Canadian publishing, Laberinto Press.
Shimelis Gebremichael moved to Canada about four years ago. Shimelis is originally from Ethiopia where he practiced journalism in both print and electronic mediums. He is a Master of Arts in Communications and Technology (MACT) graduate at the University of Alberta. He also did his MA in Journalism and Communications and BA in Foreign Language and Literature (majoring in English) at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. Over the last four years, he has volunteered for CJSR, Centre for Family Literacy, and his church in Edmonton. He is passionate about making a difference in the community through his literary works (poems, prose, and other forms). He also aspires to continue his journalism career in both English and Amharic languages. Shimelis is married and blessed with two beautiful kids.
Tazeen Hasan In addition to maintaining her own blog, Tazeen regularly contributes hard news, investigative pieces, and editorials on topics ranging from science and technology to geopolitics and entertainment for a variety of online and print news outlets. For several years, she contributed travel and history pieces to Asharq-al- Awsat group of newspapers in the Middle East, and Jang and Nawa-e-Waqt groups in Pakistan. She has traveled extensively in the Middle East, Western Europe, parts of South Asia, Africa, and North America with a focus on exploring history and culture. She is fluent in both written and spoken English and Urdu, with a working knowledge of Arabic, Punjabi, and Hindi. In 2020, Tazeen completed her studies of Journalism at Harvard University Extension School.
Wendy McGrath is a writer and artist who works in multiple genres. Her poetry/photography collaboration with Danny Miles, drummer for July Talk and Tongue Helmet, is trying to find a home. McGrath’s most recent spoken word project, BEFORE WE KNEW is her second CD with Sascha Liebrand. Her first project with Liebrand, BOX, is an adaptation of her eponymous long poem with the group Quarto & Sound. “MOVEMENT 1” from the CD was nominated for a 2018 City of Edmonton Music Award in the Jazz Recording of the Year category. McGrath continues her artistic practice in visual art—including printmaking and artist’s books.
Marco Melfi is an Edmonton poet whose work has been published in The Prairie Journal, FreeFall, the Edmonton Poetry Festival’s Poetry Route and 40 Below: Volume 2 . His chapbook, In Between Trains, was published in 2014, and Marco was the recipient of the Sharon Drummond Chapbook Prize.
Peter Midgley is a poet and storyteller born in South Africa and based in Edmonton. He has performed in several countries around the world and has published three children's books, one of which, Thuli's Mattress, won the International Board on Books for Young People Award for Literacy Promotion and has been translated into twenty-seven languages. His latest poetry collection, Let Us Not Think of Them As Barbarians was released in 2019 (NeWest Press).
Adriana Oniţă is a Romanian-Canadian poet, founder of The Polyglot, a multilingual magazine of poetry and art. She writes poetry in English, Spanish, Romanian, French, and Italian. Her passion for languages has led her to pursue a PhD in second language education. She is the author of the ekphrastic chapbook Conjugated Light (Glass Buffalo, 2019). She is a recipient of a Killam Scholarship and is a PhD candidate in Educational Policy with the University of Alberta.
Ana Ruiz Aguirre is a Cuban-Canadian cultural researcher and development strategist. Born in Santiago de Cuba and currently based in amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton, AB), her work focuses on the development of cultural equity through research, writing, and curating.
Maitham Salman was born in Iraq and came to Canada in 1998 as a political refugee. He has published a novel, Husks as Big as My Country, and a collection of short stories, The Dirhams of Caliphate, in Arabic, as well as many articles and short stories in Arabic and Canadian newspapers and magazines.
Asma Sayed is Canada Research Chair in South Asian Literary and Cultural Studies at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. She is a multilingual writer, translator, and academic originally from India. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Alberta, and writes regularly on issues of social justice in literature, film, and media. Her publications include five books and numerous essays, fiction, creative non-fiction, and translations in periodicals, anthologies, and academic journals. In 2016-17, she was one of the authors selected for Edmonton's Borderlines Writers Circle hosted by the Writers' Guild of Alberta.
Anna Marie Sewell specializes in collaborative multi-genre projects. MacEwan University's 2019 Writer-in-Residence, her creative process draws on heritage (Mi'gmaq/Anishinaabe/Polish), music, and multiple languages. Edmonton's fourth Poet Laureate, she's published two poetry books. Her first novel, Humane, arrives in 2020 from Stonehouse Press. Her bread recipe was published in 2019, in the University of Alberta cookbookOur Stories, Our Food. Her online home is prairiepomes.com.
Excerpt: Beyond the Food Court: An Anthology of Literary Cuisines (edited by Luciana Erregue-Sacchi)
Disposable Double Double LivesMila Bongco-Philipzig (Philippines) In 2014, a week after my son turned fourteen, he started working at a fast food counter in Edmonton City Centre Mall. At that time, the food court was located in the basement, and all the fast food stalls formed a circle around the middle seating area. There were Filipino temporary foreign workers (TFWs) working in almost all of the stalls. I knew only one of them, but the Filipino workers in the food court all knew each other. Quickly, they learned about my young son working at McDonalds. About three weeks after my son started, I waited to pick him up until past the mall’s closing time. All the stalls emptied, and the grilled gates were drawn to block off the food court area. I had no way to know where my son was. I peered through the grills worriedly until a Filipino custodian came out with a mop, saw me, then deliberately walked over. He said my son was still inside, washing up the floors and kitchen sinks at McD. I had never met this man before, yet he knew me and my son, and took the time to assuage me. As I frequented this food court to pick up my son, I got to know more of the Filipino foreign workers there. Truly heartwarming to me, they repeatedly said that they were keeping an eye out for my son and that he could have freebies from them. During his breaks, he could walk through the food court and would get offered a cookie here, some tacos there, a slice of pizza, some teriyaki beef with rice—what a treat! I felt we had stumbled upon a community invisible to most Canadians, but which brought back memories of growing up in a little village in the Philippines. The summer I was five, my siblings and I stayed with our grandma. In the wet market, we knew exactly which stalls to go to for free stuff: a free coconut bun or a square of kalamay (sticky rice), a glass of sago and gulaman, or a stick of banana que (fried, sugared plaintain). Once, we even got free rubber slippers! Only later did I find out, these people knew our mother left us earlier that year and were actually giving us little tokens of affection. I felt the Filipinos working at the food court were doing the same for my son whom they had never met before. What were the chances that the saying, “It takes a village to raise a child” would play out in a Canadian food court for us? I was also elated to find out that many of the TFWs cooked extremely well and accepted orders. Suddenly, I had access to traditional Philippine food that was not readily available in Edmonton at that time: pancit palabok, molo, laing, bicol express, kare-kare, dinuguan, menudo, mechado, chicken pastel, empanada, cassava cake, sapin-sapin, turon, and so on. I started eating lunch more and more often in that food court, enjoying traditional Philippine food, as well as sharing memories and stories with my heritage community. And without knowing how to cook myself, I became a star at potluck parties. After I helped one of the TFWs gather documents and write a letter to obtain a visitor visa to Canada for her mother, some other workers came to me for assistance in documentation, letter-writing, and understanding policies on employment, benefits, and becoming a permanent resident in Canada. I got to know them better as they confided in me more and more. I was dismayed and alarmed to find out about their plight as TFWs. Many of them had gone into debt in order to pay some placement agency to come over. The TFWs had left parents, siblings, spouses, and children, putting their lives on hold for the chance to work for low or minimum wages in Canada. Each and every one came hoping to become a permanent resident at the end of their contract, and to bring the rest of their family over to Canada. Unfortunately, it was not made clear to them that this would be extremely difficult, and in many cases impossible. When Canada started the Temporary Foreign Workers Programme (TFWP) in 1973, its main objective was to fill short-term labour shortages for live-in caregivers, seasonal agricultural workers, and skilled workers in the fields of IT, nursing, research, and so on. I myself came on a student visa in 1984 and after completing a master’s degree, was eligible to apply for permanent residency. Starting in 2002, however, changes in the TFWP added recruitment in the Low-Skills category. The change to include low- and minimumwage occupations was a major turning point from Canada’s traditional immigration policy that allowed temporary foreign workers to eventually apply for permanent residency. Under the new policy, the direct path to Canadian citizenship was gone. TFWs now entered the country with temporary contracts tied to one particular employer. In order to keep a work permit, renew a contract, or be eligible to apply for permanent status, they needed the support of their employer—a vulnerable and exploitable position to be in. As a result, TFWs were often scared to speak out about exploitative work, unacceptable living conditions, and the precariousness of their status in Canada. TFWs often found themselves in cramped living conditions, for example, five to seven people sharing a two-bedroom basement, paying rents far higher than market value to their employers as the money was automatically deducted from their pay. Some were not paid for overtime worked, were compelled to work over holidays, and often refused adequate time off. Some TFWs were required to do additional manual work for their employers outside the scope of what they were hired for. Some found themselves in small towns where they had to endure racial slurs and disdain. Yet despite these hardships and injustices, there seemed to be an unending supply of Filipino TFWs in the food courts and fast food diners in Edmonton, and to some degree, all over Alberta. Indeed, from 2000 to 2011, there was a noticeable increase in the numbers of TFWs in Alberta: it jumped from around 9,500 in 2000 to over 65,000 in 2011. At the peak of TFW hiring between 2007 and 2011, the Philippines was the largest source of international migrant labour for western Canada, providing people to work mostly as meat packers, food counter attendants, and hotel room service staff. In addition to the 2002 changes in the TFWP, the rapid rise of Filipino TFWs in Alberta can be attributed to the following factors: a) the oil boom in Alberta circa 2005–2014 b) the expansion and fast-tracking of temporary workers in the fast food, hotel, and meat packing industries in 2006 onwards c) Tim Hortons' pivotal role in shaping the Stream for Low-Skilled Occupations (S-LSO), as well as its target recruitment from the Philippines d) the systemic complicity of the Philippine administration for international labour brokering. The Philippine government played an active part in providing migrant workers internationally, and to Canada specifically. Since the 1990s, the Philippines had increasingly benefitted from the remittances sent by overseas workers. The government started to intentionally research global labour markets to identify anticipated shortages. TESDA (Technical Education and Skills Development Authority) was established to provide training programmes to align with the global demands, purposefully creating culture-and industryspecific Filipino workers appropriate for export to host destinations. In her book, Marketing Dreams, Manufacturing Heroes: The Transnational Labor Brokering of Filipino Workers, Anna Guevarra shows how the Philippine state and employment agencies actively marketed and manufactured a social imaginary of the Philippines as the “Home of the Great Worker.” It was subtly instilled among Filipinos that they should be disciplined and loyal migrant workers because they had the responsibility to their country and families to support and sustain this manufactured image of the “Great Filipino Worker.” Instead of systematically addressing the lack of opportunities and unacceptably high unemployment in the country, the Philippine state deliberately instilled desires in Filipinos to work overseas, hailing them as modern-day heroes for consistently sending back remittances which have propped up the economy. But more than just being able to work and send money back home, many migrant workers dream of relocating permanently to a country more developed and affluent than the Philippines for a better life for themselves and their families. With this mindset, Canada had always been at the top of work destinations for Filipinos, second only to the US and high above countries in Asia and the Middle East. The migration history between Canada and the Philippines in the 1960s and 1970s—when Filipinos came over as nurses, garment workers, live-in caregivers, and eventually became permanent residents— created the prevalent thinking among TFWs that migration to Canada was almost guaranteed at the end of a work contract. The desire to migrate permanently to Canada resulted in the pervasiveness of Filipinos coming over to work as TFWs in Alberta starting in the early 2000s until the present.
Editorial Reviews
"An enjoyable, important read, Beyond the Food Court shows a path to finding common ground in our polarizing times." —Ximena González, Alberta Views
"Canadian-Argentinian writer, editor, and art historian Luciana Erregue had observed a lack of titles in local bookshops written by authors whose first language is not English. She also didn’t see many cultures represented in translated works, and wanted to do her part to change that oversight. Beyond the Food Court: An Anthology of Literary Cuisines, is a collection of 14 creative non-fiction essays about food written by various diasporic authors living in Canada." --Sue Carter, Quill and Quire
"Luciana Erregue-Sacchi, the editor of Beyond the Food Court, describes this collection of creative non-fiction essays about food as a feast. She is spot-on: each essay is an exquisitely crafted dish; the ingredients of family, culture, nostalgia, and history all in perfect balance. This book will make you hungry. It will also make you think. --Rachel Hernandes, The Miramichi Reader