Reading with Las Comadres

About the book

A delightfully humorous and touching collection of anecdotes, recipes, and personal memoirs of the intersection between tamales and cultura. Illustrated with drawings and photographs.

Affirming the fun, the flavor, and the 7,000 years of tamalada history throughout the Americas, Tamales, Comadres, and the Meaning of Civilization is a delightful collection of folk sayings, personal anecdotes, hints, recipes, a tamale corrido, humor, a blog duel, and the philosophy of women's collaborations. Professor Ellen Riojas Clark and award-winning author Carmen Tafolla team up in this woman-led project to create a beautiful gift that wraps the culture of the community like a steaming tamal!

Introducing ... Civilization!

So what do tamales and comadres have to do with civilization? Everything! Unwrap a delicious, steaming tamale from its corn shucks and you are unwrapping one of the keys to the survival of humans for the last 7,000 years in the Americas. Tamales have outlasted nations, flags, even languages. Our history and our stories are wrapped in those shucks.

This book can best be described as a collaborative labor of love, which, just like a tamalada, requires laughter, tears, chisme, an intense amount of work, and a sense of wanting to feed a whole pueblo hungry to read about their culinary and historical hojas. It is a symbol of the giving our mothers and grandmothers did to feed us physically and spiritually. And if you wonder how this book came about, it was, very fittingly, out of that same sense of crazy comadrazgo and caring for the comunidad.

About the Authors

Dr. Carmen Tafolla grew up in the west side barrios of San Antonio, Texas, west of the matanzas, south of the molinos, and north of la labor de helote. Tafolla is the author of more than fifteen books, including The Holy Tortilla and a Pot of Beans, What Can You Do with a Paleta?, Fiesta Babies and many others, and has been awarded the 2010 Américas Award, the Tomás Rivera Mexican–American Book Award (2009 and 2010), two International Latino Book Awards, the 2010 Charlotte Zolotow Award for best childrens picture book writing, and the 1999 Art of Peace Award for "writing which contributes to peace, justice, and human understanding." She has performed her one–woman show in London, Madrid, Mexico City, Norway, Germany, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, and throughout the United States. Dr. Tafolla teaches at the University of Texas–San Antonio, and is blessed with a home where her 92–year–old mother, her activist/scholar husband Dr. Ernesto Bernal, her three children Mari, Israel and Ariana, grandson Anthony, and many primos and friends provide the constant locura sabrosa of a tamalada. Her favorite tamales are a tie between the green corn tamales made from low–fat mozzarella and canola oil by the señora in Flagstaff, or the tamales de helote her tías used to wrap in fresh, green shucks.

Dr. Ellen Riojas Clark, born in San Antonio, is a graduate of Trinity University, UTSA, the University of Texas at Austin, and of many tamaladas. As Professor of Bicultural Bilingual Studies at the University of Texas–San Antonio, she has published over eighty academic articles. Ellen served as Educational Content Director for the Scholastic PBS children's cartoon series Maya and Miguel and claims the title of Abuela Elena on the series. Dr. Clark's contributions to the cultural life of San Antonio have been recognized with the La Prensa Outstanding Women in Action Award, the San Antonio Women's Hall of Fame, the Yellow Rose of Texas, and coronation as Queen Huevo for San Anto Cultural Center. She is one of the authors of "Las Dos Abuelas," a San Antonio Express–News column on books and travel. Ellen has been featured in several documentaries — Huipiles: Fabric of Identity; Latino Leaders, In Search of Racial Justice; Nachos, Tequila and more; and Hollydays, where you can see her every Christmas, making her famous tamales. She and Hector are parents of two engineer daughters and four granddaughters.

About the Guest Interviewer

Nora de Hoyos Comstock, Ph.D.