EATS: A Folk History of Texas Foods by Ernestine Sewell Linck, Joyce Gibson Roach

Abstract

Reviews 275 He himself is an informant in the book, “an Anglo growing up in the El Paso area half a century ago.” He presents material collected over the past “twentyplus years” and lends insight into ethnic composition and development, for Mexican-American cultural elements are Indian, Spanish, Mexican, and Anglo-American. The book makes one aware that ethnicity includes not only ancestry, race, national origin, and language usage, but also group values, rules of social interaction, social customs, and perception of behavioral roles. West not only presents themes found in Mexican-American folk narra­ tives with examples of their style of presentation, such as don Cacahuate tales (trickster figure), but he addresses the issue of ethnic diversity and meaning and understanding of ethnic membership. For instance, these things reveal themselves in the anonymous mural works of a neighborhood with their themes of community, common bond, ethnic identity, and political concerns; Virgin of Guadalupe, myth of Aztlan. He recognizes that Hispanic culture is not monolithic by mentioning the difference between the northern New Mexico Hispanic ways and the border area Hispanics. And he does not go over old material nor simply present customs, beliefs, ritualsbecause they are considered exotic by Anglo-Americans. As he presents the material, what emerges is the dominance of the urban as the context for current Mexican-American folk material. Folk arts gravitate to barrio walls, to low rider cars; folk drama and dancing cease to be dominated by the country setting and “urban belief tales” arise. West’s book gives a good framework which can assist a person in attempts to fill in the gaps in Mexican-American folk knowledge. And although the Mexican-American music section lacks transcriptions of the music (the source notes contain only one) and folk clothing is hardly touched upon, the book does give a broad range of information and, more importantly, reveals a sense of Mexican-American ethnic identity and degrees of acculturation. RAMON SANCHEZ University of New Mexico EATS: A Folk History of Texas Foods. By Ernestine Sewell Linck and Joyce Gibson Roach. (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1989. 257 pages, $23.50.) Everyone loves food. Even people who hate to cook, hate to eat, hate everything about the gastronomical process, love food. Also, almost everyone has an idea of how food should be prepared. Let’s face it, no one cooks turkey and dressing like your Grandmother Hooley did; no one bakes an apple pie like Aunt Martha’s; no one can whip up a tureen of chicken and dumplings like Cousin Bess; and absolutely no one makes anything as good as Mom used to make it. The question that burns with the intensity of dyspepsia is “Why not?” Surely the onslaught of fast-food joints, food processors, freeze-dried dinners, and the cardinal culinary sin, the cake mix (ugh!) should not com­ 276 Western American Literature pletely diminish the gourmet talents of yesteryear. But such abominations have almost ruined food; they have led to a recession in quality that makes pot likker and poke sallet antique memories along with son-of-a-gun-stew, corn dodgers, and Hoppin’John. In EATS, folklorists Sewell and Roach offer much more than mere explanations for why food tasted better twenty, forty, even a hundred years ago. They also do more than merely revive a time when counting calories and measuring cholesterol were unthinkable, when being well-fed (not just full) was as much an expectation as a right. They recall a time when eggs were measured in pounds, when heavy cream and lard were required for decent baking and frying, when “Let’s Eat” was a battle cry to signal an onslaught on vittles that had been carefully prepared for hours over a red-hot stove with utensils that would require hard scrubbing to be readied for the next bout with the demon who attacks us all:hunger. The authors have stuffed EATS with the history, lore, myth, and miscon­ ceptions surrounding this single activity shared by all humans. Centering their study in Texas, where the South met the West—at least on the supper table— and was forever changed by the experience, they catalogue compromises and innovations...