Salvadoran-American Karla Tatiana Vasquez, author of the recently published The SalviSoul Cookbook, has gone from being an “estorbo” in the kitchen - her mom’s words! - to providing a platform for salvadoreñas to share their recipes with the world.

During a May 11 event presented by DC Public Library and Bold Fork Books that was held at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, D.C., Vasquez discussed her journey in writing her book, which was published this year by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

As noted on the SalviSoul website, the book features 80 Salvadoran recipes, as well as conversations between Vasquez and “moms, aunts, grandmothers, and friends to preserve their histories so that they do not go unheard.”

In the May 11 event, which involved a conversation with Dr. Ana Patricia Rodriguez, associate professor of the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures in the Spanish and Portuguese Department at the University of Maryland, College Park, Vasquez noted that so much of what made it into the book is a process of her “wanting to touch sore spots that were just a part of my upbringing.”

Vasquez said that she grew up with anxiety about separation, noting: “I was born in El Salvador, so I got a green card when I was a teenager. I became a citizen of this country sophomore year of college and, I think, for a long time, I didn’t realize that the name of my enemy was separation, but it was.”

Vasquez said that her father would say, “‘Karla, cuidado cruzando la calle,’ like, ‘Don’t jaywalk because if a police officer sees you, they’re going to separate you from us.’”

His warning was that it takes nothing for you to be separated from your loved ones, Vasquez said, adding: “I felt so anxious by that. We were already separated from the homeland. We were already separated from family. We were already separated from, like, fruits that I would hear my mom talk about. If you guys ever heard a family member talk about anonas, oh my gosh, I have to try that.”

Vasquez said that she felt that “food cured a lot of separation” issues and provided more answers to questions that she had about El Salvador.

“[T]he food nourished my physical form, but the stories I got at the table nourished the part of my soul that wanted to know more about where I was from,” she said.

Noting that her parents are fantastic storytellers who shared stories as they ate meals together, Vasquez said that growing up, “there was a good chunk of my life where English was not comfortable for me, and then Spanish was not comfortable for me, but I always felt comfortable eating platanos [y] frijoles licuados.”

A recipe is like an address that tells “me where I’m from, and so I felt like, ok, if I want to make peace with my identity,” then food was making the space for her to unpack those kinds of questions, she said.

Food as a connector for those in diaspora

Rodriguez noted that food “can be a connector,” and that that is true for the large Salvadoran diaspora.

Vasquez agreed, noting that when she was doing cooking classes, Salvadoran students tuned in from such places as Abu Dhabi and Japan, with one student in Paris asking her if she could use aged cheese from that city as a substitute for queso salvadoreño in a recipe.

“I’m like, ‘Girl, yes, use it,’” she said, adding, “[W]e have these maps [or recipes] that tell us, ‘Con tal que tengas un poco de esto,’ [or], ‘As long as you have a little bit of this, you’re going to be able to recreate that connection to home.’”

As noted on the SalviSoul website, the United States saw a large diaspora of Salvadoran immigrants in the 1980s. According to the website, due to the political turmoil, violence, and danger caused in part by the 12-year civil war in El Salvador, which ended in 1992, Salvadorans fled to the United States, making such cities as Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston their home.

According to an Aug. 16, 2023 Pew Research Center fact sheet, about 2.5 million Latinos of Salvadoran origin lived in the United States in 2021, with Salvadorans being the third-largest population of Hispanic origin living in the United States, and accounting for 4% of the U.S. Hispanic population in 2021.

Rodriguez noted during the presentation that Vasquez’s book is also about translation and interpretation, adding, “[Y]ou read a recipe and you translate it and you materialize it, but it’s also a metaphor for a lot of us [who] are in diaspora” away from their countries, living in cities like Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and translating experiences in their new homes.

Rodriguez asked Vasquez to discuss the process of capturing the women’s stories, but also of translating those experiences and gathering their recipes, to which Vasquez said with a laugh that trying to document her mother’s recipes, for instance, “is a little bit of a pesadilla sometimes.”

Vasquez added: “[T]o me, a recipe is like an address - that’s where my mom lives, that’s where I can visit her. No matter what happens to her, no matter where I go, if I find these ingredients, I’m going to be able to visit her.”

However, Vasquez said that when she tried to explain that to her mother, the response she got from her “was very much, ‘Karla, eres un estorbo.’ … She is like, ‘You are all swept away by the romance of it, but … a kitchen is a brutal place; you’re standing; there’s sharp things; there’s fire; [and] there’s hungry people at the other side of all that stress.’”

The matriarchs in her family discussed food as a tool of survival, she added, noting that getting a lot of that translation “took a lot of nuance” on her part.

Vasquez said that she had approached her mother at times with too much entitlement when asking about her recipes, noting: “I was asking for her to give me something that took her decades. I was asking her to give me the keys to the kingdom, and I hadn’t put in the time - I hadn’t put in the work.”

Those conversations with her mother helped Vasquez understand that she, too, “needed to have some skin in the game,” as well as “to take care of the person who had the information, and not extract that information just for the sake of me having it.”

As Vasquez writes in her book: “I am not telling any of the women’s entire life stories. I am giving you only a glimpse, mere sneak peeks that teach us something about living, humanity, love, or loss - and just a moment to see the women as they were in those moments.”

Rodriguez noted during the presentation that while Vasquez’s work involves gathering stories and recipes, it is “also creating a holding space for the voices” of the women who shared their recipes.

Mamá Lucy and the point of no return for SalviSoul

Vasquez said that she sees her abuela, Mamá Lucy, as the co-creator of SalviSoul, adding that when she pitched her the idea, her grandmother said, “‘Karla, te entiendo,’ (I understand), éste trabajo es sobre el legado de la mujer salvadoreña. This is about the legacy of Salvadoran women.’”

That was the point of no return in her journey with SalviSoul, as her grandmother’s words made her want to interview her, Vasquez said.

“[W]hen I finally got the chance to sit down with her…I could hear the score, I could see the cinematography; the way she told her story was so much more alive than when I heard it from secondhand from somebody else,” she said. “[S]he became the heroine of the story. She had agency in her story. She was a young woman in the ‘60s in El Salvador. I could hear ‘60s music. There was so much color that I could hear and see when I heard her share her story, and I realized that I liked those stories better,” as her grandmother knew why she was sharing them.

She said that she applied that same formula when she interviewed the women for her book. Vasquez said she told the women, “[T]ell me whatever you want to tell me,” and that those are the stories that made it in the book.

“I lost my grandmother throughout this process and I thought, how foolish would I be if I don’t treat them the same way that I would want” her grandmother to be treated, she said through tears.

Vasquez said that in interviewing the women for her book, she would first meet with them and talk with them for hours in order for them to “feel some confianza with me.”

She also noted that they each had their own cooking style. One of them, for instance, used a taza, or mug, to measure ingredients, Vasquez said, adding that since their conversation took place over the phone rather than in person, she had to ask the woman to send her a photo of the taza so that Vasquez could then find a similar-sized mug at her own home in order to replicate the woman’s measurements.

Other challenges included wondering “is anyone going to care” to read her work since a book like hers had not yet been published on such a scale, she said, adding that since this was work that she started with her grandmother “and I lost her in the process, I needed to work out my grief, [and] I decided I cannot work with anyone who makes me feel like they’re doing me a favor.”

She noted that she insisted on working with individuals in publishing who understood her passion for creating a product that highlighted El Salvador’s dignity and authenticity, including in capturing just the right image for the book’s cover.

Vasquez said that she advocated for herself, knowing that she did not “want to work with anyone who makes me feel is belittling my work, dismissing the amount of grit, persistence, [and] research that I have to do, because I’m doing all the work.”

Speaking with Los Cafetales after the presentation, Rodriguez said that for her, Vasquez’s book represents a “taste of home,” noting that the way that the author conceptualized food, “it really is about diaspora” and “about us looking for a place where we can’t be.”

Vasquez told Los Cafetales after the presentation that she hopes the recipes and stories featured in her book allow Salvadorans to “know that they can be happy and proud of the humble roots that we have,” as they look toward the country’s future.

To purchase The SalviSoul Cookbook, and to learn more about Karla Tatiana Vasquez, visit her website.

Photo credit: Cori