But as a White British woman, Kennedy has always been an “other” in Mexico; she calls herself an “ethno-gastronomer.” Like an ethnographer, she’s approached Mexico from the outside looking in. In “La Reina Diana,” a June 1985 Texas Monthly piece, Kennedy comes across as a fierce defender of Mexican foodways, painstakingly researching her subjects and their food in the service of anthologizing it once and for all. Indeed, Kennedy’s work is the largest catalogue of regional Mexican recipes published in English. But Kennedy’s best-selling books are filled with other people’s recipes — and very few credits are given. Along with her critiques of Mexican and Mexican American cooks and authors, her work is tinged with an air of settler colonialism, as Cassie Da Costa wrote in the Daily Beast.

Source: Washington Post July 07, 2021 13:00 UTC