Dirty Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family

Jill Damatac blends memoir, food writing, and colonial history as she cooks her way through recipes from her native-born Philippines and shares stories of her undocumented family in America. After two decades of being undocumented in the US, surviving poverty, familial trauma, and violence, Damatac self-deported in 2015, starting over in the UK. There, she began to cook Filipino dishes in an act of self-recovery, hoping to understand her experiences as an undocumented immigrant. Starting over again in London, and then as a graduate student at Cambridge University, she asks questions of belonging, identity, selfhood, and survival in a memoir of emotional intelligence, clarity, and grace.


RAVES AND REVIEWS:


"Unblinking ... fierce...makes no effort to lull the reader into complicity...Damatac and her recipes are not here for your convenience..[they] serve as both escape and reminder, toggling between the ancient past of Indigenous myth, layers of colonial scarring, childhood, the present...This is not an easy memoir, nor should it be. Damatac writes, she says, 'to document myself into existence. And, as she says of some of her recipes, it will serve many."
- The New York Times Book Review


"Dirty Kitchen is not only an astonishing memoir—it is a bravura juggling act of genre, and a vivid testament to resilience. An absolute marvel."
—Jose Antonio Vargas, Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author of Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen


"Jill Damatac's fiery culinary memoir about growing up undocumented takes America to task...Dirty Kitchen is a fiercely honest, eye-opening view of one undocumented family's experiences trying to start over in a new world."
—The San Francisco Chronicle


“Part personal memoir, part cultural analysis, and all heart, Dirty Kitchen invites us into Jill Damatac's searing journey from decades of undocumented invisibility through the slow and recursive process of healing. Vulnerable and gripping, Damatac's debut explores what it means to reclaim one's life from the jaws of generational trauma and colonialism, while honoring the great ancestral gifts of Filipino heritage. Dirty Kitchen heralds the arrival of an unforgettable new talent.”
—Qian Julie Wang, New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Country


“There's a blue fire to Jill Damatac's way with words. In Dirty Kitchen, history itself burns sapphire bright.”
—Saeed Jones, author of Alive at the End of the World and How We Fight For Our Lives


“Dirty Kitchen is a feast of many ingredients: at once a searing, heartfelt account of one undocumented family’s life, as well as a fierce, unflinching look at the indigenous and colonial history that seasons every meal. This is a book that knows that the root of the word ‘recipe’ is ‘to receive’—one that shows us, with profound resolve and tenderness, all the things we receive with every meal: every pleasure, every pain, every story, every ghost. A book to sate multiple hungers, that leaves its reader truly fed.”
—Elaine Castillo, author of America Is Not The Heart


“As nimble and bold as the dishes she describes, Jill Damatac confronts the intersectional cruelties of colonialism and patriarchy with an unflinching spirit. Damatac celebrates the resilience of Filipino food as an ingredient for healing passed down through the ancestors. Dirty Kitchen is a literary feast that sticks to your fingers like a sumptuous kamayan.”
—Albert Samaha, author of Concepcion: Conquest, Colonialism, and an Immigrant Family’s Fate


"Jill Damatac brings together myth and memory, history and hauntings, colonialism and catharsis and seats them around her table. Any reader of Dirty Kitchen is in for a feast when they pull up a chair."
—Alejandra Oliva, author of Rivermouth: A Chronicle of Language, Faith and Migration View Less