Interview: Andrea Aliseda
Photo credit: Instagram / @andrea__aliseda
Andrea Aliseda is a writer, poet, and recipe developer exploring cultural roots and origins through food.
Though she’s been writing actively since she was a little, the Los Angeles-based writer says she started taking the craft more seriously as a professional writer about four years ago. Since then, her writing has appeared in the likes of top publications like Bon Appetit, Whetstone, Refinery29, Epicurious, Food Network, and many more.
Aliseda’s work often spotlights ingredients and foods through her personal lens as a Mexican American, offering nuance and context that dives deep into history and identity. She’s recently explored the critical Indigenous tradition that inspired the Instagram trend of colorful masa tortillas, and penned an essay on how quelites helped her see herself in vegan Mexican cuisine. Going beyond food, she’s also written about how films like Desperado and Como Agua Para Chocolate inspired a generation of Latinas — and the “Mexican girl core” trend on Tiktok — for Harper’s Bazaar.
We sat down with Aliseda earlier this month to discuss her career, the writers who inspire her, and how she reconciles her identity as a Mexican American with her interest in veganism. This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
Tell me about yourself today.
Currently a hungry homebody who loves her dogs, tv shows, being cozy, writing, drinking tea, walks with my partner, fangirling over maíz, and mushrooms, daydreaming, cutting my hair, and questioning my existence.
Describe the place you come from in one sentence.
A third place between two borders, English, Spanish, Spanglish, tacos, burritos and the cutting dualism of who can cross and who can’t. (Tijuana, BC - San Diego, CA).
Your sign(s)?
Cancer sun, Virgo moon, Leo rising!
When did you start writing, and when did you start your current gig?
I started writing as a kid, mostly songs, journal entries, poetry, and later fictional stories. I started my writing career originally at my college paper, but officially and seriously about four years ago!
How has your background has informed your writing?
I’ve let it inform everything, and allowed personal experience to have weight and validity and perspective. I've let myself take ownership of my story, point of view is really important. At the same time, I’ve had the realization that my background and experience is also an extremely limited view point and that there’s so damn much I have no idea about. That realization has freed me up to look at what I write about with curiosity from the perspective of a student. There’s more possibility and openness there.
What was the catalyst for your interest in veganism? How has that manifested in your interest in Mexican cuisine?
I was genuinely interested in being meatless since my youth, my earliest memories probably around the time I was twelve or eleven, and was generally picky about which meats I’d eat. I was vegetarian for about seven years but stopped for a couple of years to have a meat sabbatical when I started working at a “farm to table” gastropub and started thinking about food more in a gourmand way and taste foods I hadn’t before. It was always meant to be a break, and I had every intention of going back to a vegetarian diet. Long story short, the catalyst was my partner and I’s dog Blue entering our lives in conjunction with watching the movie Okja on the back of a one-month vegan challenge about four years ago.
Photo credit: Instagram / @andrea__aliseda
Going vegan instantly created friction and dialogue with my northern/border Mexican culture and the cuisine I had grown up with, which caused me to respond––especially if I wanted to retain such a special and enormous part of my roots. It wasn’t until I moved to New York though that I really felt my culture’s absence and began exploring what it means to reconnect and reclaim your culture through food. Doing so through the lens of a vegan diet only brought more into the dialogue and feelings I was moving through.
There’s always this idea that you can’t be Mexican and be meatless because meat is such a big part of its cuisines, but it’s not the case, there’s so much that gets erased under that assumption. So this part of my journey has entirely given shape to how I think about and approach food history and origins in Mexico, bringing light to the stories that are hidden in the post-colonial shadow of “meat,” getting into it from a regional perspective, letting core plant ingredients speak, expressing the culture that surrounds those stories, and also having the space to tell my own.
Do you tend to approach your poetry differently than you do your other writing? What’s your process?
This is a lovely question. Totally! At the risk of sounding cheesy, poetry is a practice of stillness and letting the words come to me. It’s very spirit-led and visceral, if I try to be too intentional with it I’ve already f*cked it up. I have to literally turn off my brain otherwise it gets in the way. It’s become a way for me to process emotions or phases of my life. I’ll have something and think I understand what my poem was about but sometimes it’s not until later that I *actually* get what my body was trying to tell me.
With my TE AMO project, I’ll ask my clients to fill out a questionnaire and sit with it, try to absorb the intention and pick up on the message they want to relay to their loved one. Afterwards I try to tap in, not interfere too much, let it come, mail it out and hope they like it! I really cherish being entrusted to send people personalized love poems.
“I like to give context, and to give unheard voices and stories a platform.”
— Andrea Aliseda
How do you find inspiration for developing recipes?
Nostalgia and food memories, which being vegan I do have quite a bit of. But also being inspired by other cooks, recipes, watching people cook, and eating other people’s food! The element of play also brings about inspiration, making mistakes, getting into a creative flow, not having the right ingredients and creating a different version of something.
Outside of writing, what sparks joy in your life? Any passion projects?
Eating and cooking!! But that one is obvious. Being outdoors in nature, the feel of a new book, listening to podcasts, being in conversation with my partner, resting. There’s something in the works but it’s in very very infant stages. There’s also a little poetry chapbook I want to put out. Outside of that I’m just trying to get my shit together!
Any films or tv shows that you would describe as "character forming”?
Sex and The City, Twin Peaks, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, Lovecraft Country!
What was the "a-ha" moment that made you realize you wanted to be a writer?
A part of me always wanted to write novels and saw myself writing for magazines, but it took a while for me to have any confidence in it or take it seriously. I didn’t consider myself a writer for a long time because it was just such a part of me, it’s really hard to have any mental clarity without it (in short), it’s the way I experience myself (if that makes sense). It wasn’t until a friend of mine and I were talking about mediums we turned to for relief that he saw the writer in me, since that was the medium I turned to, and it helped me see it in myself for the first time in a way I hadn’t before.
One of my “a-ha” moments didn’t come until I was in college, working at the paper and in the restaurant industry. At the paper we were told we should have a focus and make a blog out of it to be able to get work. I was super inspired by Anthony Bourdain (of course!) and really getting into food more seriously, so that drove me to want a career in food writing, I just wanted to eat well for a living!
Later, when I was living in New York, I had a second “a-ha” moment that would set off my career. I had moved across the country to go to a culinary school, and when that didn’t pan out, amongst other things, I remembered writing while waiting for a subway and wanted to give myself a real chance at pursuing it. I’m really glad I did!
Photo credit: @_hardboiledbabe
How would you describe the focus or beat of your work, or perhaps your writing style? What excites you as a writer?
My work focuses on Mexican food through the lens of culture, history, nostalgia, origin and plant-based eating. I love digging into things and finding their origin or cultural significance, how its past informs our present, especially as it pertains to my country of origin.
To be honest I don’t know how to categorize my writing style, but I try to, as a friend of mine says, “paint a word picture” in a way that submerges you into a place and pieces together its world. I like to give context, and to give unheard voices and stories a platform.
Personal essays really excite me, it’s always such a thrill to pick and prod and try to go deep internally into the landscape of memory and giving words to the abstract. I like a challenge because I do really enjoy growing as a writer, even if in the moment there’s some resistance, I love walking away from a piece feeling like I’ve learned something (to which I have amazing editors to thank!). Personal essays pose their own challenge for me because it pulls from you so inwardly, you can’t really rely so much on the crutch of external research, you have to be willing to get a little vulnerable with it and be creative in terms of storytelling. I really want to get better at writing them, I have a long way to go.
I’m excited too about exploring fiction more, I’m currently (very slowly) working on a novel and it’s a total discipline of imagination, which is really cool. Delving into new-to-me fields of writing and storytelling really excites me.
Who are your favorite writers to read right now?
Fariah Róisín, Abi Balingit, Lesley Tellez, Bettina Makalintal, Sofía Aguilar, Abigail Koffler, Myriam Gurba, bell hooks, Mayukh Sen, Silvia Moreno-Garcia…
What are 5-6 items that would go into the Andrea Aliseda “starter pack”?
Wireless headphones, a 40 oz hydro flask because I drink a looooot of water, an herbal tincture, lipstick (retro - mac), a notebook, hot tea, mushrooms! (sorry, that’s seven)
Any advice you would give to anyone who wants to pursue writing as a career?
Don’t be afraid to ask writers questions, be resourceful, build a network of writers (get on twitter!), and above all, cherish and respect your craft, give it the seriousness and time and space it deserves––writing is the only way you’ll get to write, and your writing is worth it!!
Follow Andrea on Instagram @andrea__aliseda and Twitter @alisedaandrea
