Description: A memoir, essay, history, travelogue, and meditation on the mighty taco.
Brief description: Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado is Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies at Washington University in Saint Louis, USA. He is the author of El canon y sus formas: La reinvención de Harold Bloom y sus lecturas hispanoamericanas (2002), Naciones intelectuales: Las fundaciones de la modernidad literaria mexicana 1917-1959 (2009, winner of the LASA Mexico 2010 Humanities Book Award) Intermitencias americanistas: Ensayos académico y literarios 2004-2009 (2012), Screening Neoliiberalism. Transforming Mexican Cinema 1988-2012 (2014), and Strategic Occidentalism: On Mexican Fiction, The Neoliberal Book Market and the Question of World Literature (2018). He has edited and co-edited nine books, the most recent of which are Democracia, Otredad y Melancolía. Roger Bartra ante la crítica (with Mabel Moraña, 2015) and A History of Mexican Literature (with Anna Nogar and José Ramón Ruisánchez, 2016).
Review Quotes:
"Starting with a tour of Mexico City taco shops, this book takes us so much farther, to Los Angeles and Monterrey, of course, but also to Berlin and Seoul. Ignacio Sánchez Prado serves up tradition and modernity, memory and authenticity, politics and identity, all wrapped in a fresh tortilla with plenty of salsa." --Jeffrey M. Pilcher, author of Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food
"This book is both a fantastic crónica across a diverse global tacoscape, and an introduction to the vast knowledge of a master tacólogo. Sánchez Prado has written a book to be reflected on and savored, preferably with a taco, either basic or elevated." --Santiago Vaquera-Vásquez, author of Nocturno de Frontera "In his taco tour de force, Ignacio Sánchez Prado pays homage to a beloved childhood food and a Mexican culinary icon. He moves beyond well-worn debates about authenticity and tradition to demonstrate how the taco was a central feature of a uniquely Mexican modernity." --Ronda L. Brulotte, author of Mezcal in Oaxaca: A Craft Spirit for the Global Marketplace