A Taco Testimony: Meditations on Family, Food and Culture

This book tells the story of the role of tacos in the author's life, but she also creates a coming-of-age memoir as well as a loving portrait of her mother, the champion taco-maker. It includes recipes, poems, moving personal history, and thoughts about Mexican culture in both Mexico and the US, but the word pictures it creates of growing up in the 50s and 60s have parallels throughout the various "cultures" in the US. I have recently read Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros, and Esmeralda Santiago's books on growing up in Puerto Rico and the US, and find it valuable to think about all these books at once--since there are parallels in all these women's experiences.

It's so very true that you never really value what you have until it's gone. Such is the tone of A Taco Testimony. Like many of us, much of the author's life was spent wanting to get away from her small hometown and well away from her family. She wanted a life of her own where she could define who she wanted to be and where she could be a shining star. Fortunately, as being part of a family seems to do, the author could never quite shake off who she was, where she came from, and those that loved her. She was the one that ended up taking care of her parents. In doing so, she was given a gift- the understanding that her parents were human just like her, they made mistakes, they had regrets, and like her they were extremely stubborn which often left feelings unsaid. Throughout it all, during the good times and the bad, there were tacos. A Taco Testimony serves as both a memoir of the author's life experiences and a tribute to her parents. It was this latter aspect of the piece that really touched me. I started reminiscing through my own experiences, began seeing them in a new light and had the incredible urge to phone my mother and have a real conversation.

This is no cookbook about tacos, but it is a food memoir reviewed here for its even wider-ranging survey of culture, family, and belief. Denise Chavez reflects on her coming of age in New Mexico, surveying her family's traditions, memories, and food-influenced lives. It's a fine leisure choice for any who would understand both family interrelationships and cultural infleunces. Diane C. Donovan California Bookwatch

In the very first sentence of her new memoir, "A Taco Testimony: Meditations on Family, Food and Culture" (Rio Nuevo, paperback $16.95), Denise Chávez warns readers: "This is not a sweet little book about tacos; it remembers the fights that began at the kitchen table, spilled into the dining room, then moved quickly into the living room and continued into the bedroom with the sudden slam of a door that led to the hushed sound of someone crying behind that door." But the title of this moving and engrossing "memoir of food" also gives a clue to the story Chávez is about to tell. Chávez does, indeed, offer testimony about growing up in a family dealing with alcoholism as well as her own battles with depression and drugs. But this is far from being a gloomy book. In the end, Chávez inspires and cajoles the reader into learning how to appreciate family, friends, literature and good food. Of course, the recurring theme of Chávez's memoir is the taco. Reappearing throughout this engaging book are fond memories, recipes, poems and interesting facts related to the taco. For Chávez, it goes beyond delicious nourishment. It symbolizes order and comfort in a household that suffered from the alcoholic abuses of her father, Epifanio, a "brilliant lawyer" who "had no practical living skill" and drank the family into financial jeopardy. In their neat Las Cruces home, Chávez's mother, Delfina, tried mightily to maintain appearances in her marriage to this handsome and seemingly upright man. But they "lived a family lie." To the outside world, her father was a "successful small-town lawyer" married to an "untroubled beautiful mother from an even smaller town called El Povo, The Dust." Delfina met Epifanio as a widow with a child. He was supposed to be her salvation, her way of making a home that was torn apart by the untimely death of her first husband. Sadly, Epifanio failed in that regard. They eventually divorced, though Epifanio would sometimes stay overnight during important holidays, his birthday being the most important of all. In the same way her mother's tacos helped bring some warmth and stability to their home, Chávez admits that this special food came to her rescue while she attended graduate school. Far from home, she suffered from depression, smoked marijuana constantly, skipped meals and began to unravel. Chávez recounts one night when she forced herself to make tacos, all by herself with her family many miles away, to pull herself out of a downward spiral. She would not sleep until she finished cooking. Chávez succeeded in this curative act and unabashedly asserts: "Tacos can save your life." She has forgiven her father and grown stronger in the process. Now she can look back with great fondness on the good things her family offered: love (though imperfect), a rich culture, education and wonderful, healing food. Chávez is an engaging writer who has a well-honed talent for describing in intimate detail everything from human foibles t