Passing Down Her Food Heritage In a New Country

On the last episode of our special food-and-family series Juleyka reflects on her experience around parenting and food with Claudia Serrato, a culinary anthropologist who studies how to decolonize food practices. In this inspiring conversation, Claudia shows us how to reclaim the power of the kitchen, strengthen family time by centering food, and honor our hybrid identities through what we eat.

Claudia Serrato is an Indigenous culinary anthropologist, a public scholar, a doctoral candidate, a professor of ethnic studies, an Indigenous plant-based chef, and a food justice activist scholar. She was born and raised in Los Angeles, California predominantly on a P’urhépecha, Huasteca, and Zacateco diet. At an early age, she began to cook alongside her elders, gaining time-tested food knowledge, which she centered in her academic studies, arriving at the conclusion in 2007 that decolonizing the diet was essential to the survival of Indigenous foods and foodways. Since 2014 Claudia has been actively involved in the Native food justice and sovereignty movement. Claudia is also the co-founder of Across Our Kitchen Tables, a women of color culinary hub and event series founded in 2017 that generates and supports socially responsible food-based work by women of color. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Gender, Ethnicity, and Multicultural Studies, a Master’s in Mexican American Studies, a second Master’s in Anthropology, and is currently completing a Ph.D. in sociocultural anthropology from the University of Washington, Seattle. She is currently a teaching scholar at California Polytechnic University Pomona.

Learn more about her work and research here.