By Katrina T. De Los Reyes
My lola had a dirty kitchen. The kitchen was outdoors, at the back of the house, where she and my aunts took the fish to fry, the chickens to be beheaded and butchered, blood from pigs was collected, and the offal and intestines were cleaned. These are the things no one wants to see and no one talks about. Jill Damatac pulls the curtain of her dirty kitchen aside, and the result is a heartbreaking journey of survival and resilience.
Damatac’s Dirty Kitchen is an unconventional blending of the author’s memories and experiences, Filipino mythology, colonial history, cultural criticism, and, of course, food. At the same time, it is an indictment of the U.S. immigration system and how it treats the undocumented, as well as an exploration of family trauma directly impacted by such a system, fostering an environment of blame and abuse.
Damatac structures her memoir by the recipe, setting out the ingredients and describing the steps in making the dish as she discusses her history and identity. The chapters are also laced with analysis of culture, story, and history. While such a structure is clever, it is also disjointed, taking the reader out of the memoir. But perhaps this disruption is on purpose. Though the blurbs tout Dirty Kitchen as perfect for fans of Crying in H Mart or Minor Feelings, it is quite different in its scope. More akin to Grace Talusan’s The Body Papers mashed together with Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House and Qian Julie Wang’s Beautiful Country, Damatac’s Dirty Kitchen is a very uncomfortable and painful read. Visceral. If one could describe growing up in a slaughterhouse, this would be it.
Damatac skillfully recounts the harrowing details of her struggle to survive as an undocumented child-to-adult while living with a physically abusive father and being marginalized by her community. As a way of healing, Damatac learned to cook Filipino dishes, slowly reclaiming her identity and reconciling with her past.
As most memoirs go, we take a peek into her childhood and a brief look at Damatac’s parents through a child’s lens. There is an early passage on her mercurial father, who is described as affable, charismatic, and a lover of music. Damatac is more frugal with her past descriptions of her mother. Her mother was punctual, steely, and reserved. Most of the author’s happier memories are of growing up in the Philippines, which she paints with vibrant scenes.
I was struck by some of the similarities between Damatac’s family and mine. For one, we lived on the same street in Manila: Madasalin Street. We were taken care of by yayas (quite common in the Philippines). We are both the eldest daughters. We both read Stephen King books at a very young age. We had fond memories growing up in our grandparents’ homes, where extended family and friends often visited. Both of us felt that leaving our country of birth was a severance:
“The first time I cleaved from the earth and saw oceans, I was nine.”
Damatac arrived in the U.S. in 1992 at nine years old. I arrived in 1988 at twelve years old. Both of us were already fully-formed beings with memories of life before. Like most middle-class Filipinos, our parents immigrated for economic reasons. Disillusioned by the dictatorship, both our parents bought into the American dream, grounded in our consciousness by colonial mentality. That dream of America that appeared tangible, attainable, and simple: if you work hard in America, you will become successful.
But this is where our paths diverge: I was luckier–my father had a coveted H1-B visa. Though it would also take me close to twenty years to become naturalized, I didn’t have to worry about being undocumented. Damatac’s father, however, arrived in America on a tourist visa and overstayed. When the author arrived in America with her sister and mother, her mother couldn’t obtain a work visa. Rather than rejoicing when his wife and two daughters reunited with him, Damatac’s father played the blame game for a long time and took his frustrations out on Damatac, literally, while her mother turned a blind eye.
And so began her life as an undocumented person, a “TNT,” tago-ng-tago, always hiding.
“Add pulverized dreams to water, and stir.”
Damatac and her family were forced to shuttle around between family members who would take them in until they finally carved out an existence with the use of a Social Security number that allowed her mother to work. Even when they finally had a home of their own, Damatac felt no reprieve from her parents, who fleeced her of her hard-earned money and used the same system to control her. For many years, she has not gotten a break. With each step forward, she has to stumble two spaces back.
“For twenty-two years, America held me close. Not in its arms, safe from harm, or in its palm, cradled and free, but in its grasp: one hand vise-tight around my neck, the other clamped over my mouth,” she writes in the author’s note. “When everything is gone — or hidden away, like my family and I had to be — food is always there to help us remember, allowing us to taste joy, wonder, sorrow, rage. To savor yesterday and take another bite towards tomorrow.”
Though there were passages where I felt the delivery of the message was heavy-handed or contrived and preachy, these are easily overcome by the thoughtful, intricate, and evocative prose. There is an undeniable brilliance to this book and Damatac’s writing. Overall, it is effective in delivering her truth.
Dirty Kitchen is a powerful testament to the reclamation of self. Even as Damatac finally becomes “documented,” at least by immigration standards, she refuses to be part of an “imperial system” and invites us to sit down and dissect and question what is on the table.
Katrina T. De Los Reyes, writing as Katrina M.Tuy, writes book reviews and reflections on Instagram as @booknerdkat. A first-generation Filipino immigrant, she is active in the AAPI community, volunteers in book festivals, and moderates author panels, and has a career in public service. She is also a writer working on her first novel.