rasgos asiáticos: Nadie Va a Tener Hambre Aquí
May 2019
By Virginia Grise
My uncle Andres and grandfather Manuel sold fruits and vegetables in the Mercado Colon in Monterrey. After my grandfather died, Andres left the business, but not after helping several of the men who worked for him start businesses of their own. Because of this, he always had an endless supply of groceries. Nadie va a tener hambre aquí, he’d say. At a very young age, I learned that in order to survive as a people we would have to make sure that no one went hungry. There is a word for this concept, way of being, in Cantonese. I can not remember what it is , but I never forgot the lesson.
What if, instead of a play, theatre was a meal with friends and strangers, shared stories at a table of our own making, where nobody goes hungry?
With DiverseWorks in Houston, we imagined and turned a 100 ft train shed at the Sawyer Yards' rice silos into a market of memories and dreams and threw a huge dinner party designed by Veronica Castillo Salas prepared over a wood burning fire, together with Marlene Beltran, Rosie Torres, and the Castillo Salas family - Vero's mom, sister and husband. The meal included a clear broth soup with mushrooms, bok choy and huitlacoche dumplings, a nopal salad with huauzontle and sweet pea shoots, white rice and arrachera, red snapper a la parilla with eggplant, agua de jamaica and piña and champurrado and rum and mezcal and and and…
At the onset of the pandemic, when Vero was forced to temporarily shut down her gallery in San Antonio, she started cooking comida casera from her patio. With the help of a volunteer army, she has made more than 4,780 meals for the elders, the unhoused, her friends and her neighbors.
So grateful for this community, for being fed, for feeling full.
Photos by: Paul Hester, DiverseWorks 2021
