Latin@ Studies in Transnational Contexts: Reading, Writing, and Living Lives on/in the Margins

Year 2015, Issue: 42, 1 - 10, 01.10.2015

Christopher Rivera Jennifer A. Reimer

Abstract

It was a normal night out in Ankara: two foreigners trying to navigate a seemingly incomprehensible geography of streets and landmarks, restaurants and bars. At last we find a place where the waiter speaks enough English to understand our meager Turkish. Starving, we flip through page after page of the gigantic menu, until we both pause when we find a section labeled: fajitalar. Immediately, our minds were buzzing with ideas and questions. How did the word fajita, the name for a popular Mexican-American dish composed of grilled meats and vegetables, traditionally served on a sizzling platter with a side of tortillas, salsas, and guacamole, travel to Ankara, Turkey? Of course, the global reach of “Mexican” food is no surprise: in our travels, we’ve encountered various “translations” of Mexican food in places such as Italy, Germany, Cyprus, Romania and beyond. What struck us about this particular menu was the word: fajitalar. In naming this dish here, and at other Turkish restaurants we subsequently discovered , the restaurants performed a fascinating interlingual act: the combination of the Mexican-American word “fajita” with the Turkish suffix for plurality -lar or –ler . For us, fajitalar became a touchstone of the ways in which Latin@ cultures travel abroad. What fascinates us about these cultural migrations was how their circulatory, migratory patterns shift, change, and adapt both or all cultures, including their accompanying epistemologies, genres, and identities.

Keywords

Latin, Studies, Transnational

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