In Ways the Phillipines Can Talk by Kay Ulanday Barrett, the author uses Tagalog and references to Filipino and Filipino-American culture to unpack their own experiences of diaspora and queerness. In one line Barrett references kanin, tagalog for rice, writing
“Titas shift the kanin their plates as though they could trim your fat,
extend the length of your hair,
sprout a loudmouthed husband at your side,
all with the slightest bent joint”
The reference to kanin interested me because it felt like a particularly chosen and evocative image: a pushy aunt playing with rice on a plate. As Filomeno V. Aguilar Jr. writes in Rice and Magic: A Cultural History From the Precolonial World to the Present, rice is a staple in modern day Filipino cooking and holds particular weight in Filipino culture. Through the article, Aguilar traces the history of rice cultivation in the Phillipines to its roots in pre-colonial indigenous culture. Rice was originally cultivated sparsely due to the relatively high amount of labor required, and was not a staple but a delicacy. According to Aguilar, rice cultivation was originally invested with religious and spiritual meaning, with labor performed only by women and with long required periods for crops to be left to rest. However during Spanish colonization, the ruling Spanish friars introduced and required new forms of rice cultivation. These methods changed rice from being a rare dish for the wealthy to being a regular staple in Filipino cuisine due to its new prevalence. In addition, Spanish rule shifted and often stripped the communal cultural significance of rice, with spirituality being retained only through individualist Christian framings.
In this line, Barrett uses kanin to represent how food created a particular tie for them back to Filipino culture. The tagalog used here demonstrates how meals became a place both for the author to feel connected to their family and culture, but also a site of discomfort and criticism. Barrett places themself as the rice on the plate – cultivated and cooked, a thing to be played with and shaped into forms more suiting their family.
AGUILAR, FILOMENO V. “Rice and Magic A Cultural History from the Precolonial World to the Present.” Philippine Studies: Historical & Ethnographic Viewpoints, vol. 61, no. 3, 2013, pp. 297–330.