Ilan Stavans is the author of the new children's picture book The Secret Recipe. His many other books include Sabor Judio. He is the Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities and Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College.
Q: What inspired you to write The Secret Recipe?
A: The Secret Recipe honors the Ladino-speaking friends I grew up with in my native Mexico City.
The culture of recipes, I have learned after putting together Sabor Judio: The Jewish Mexican Cookbook (2024), the dialogue across generations by Jewish women, who pass on and revise knowledge by bringing together food and language.
My little protagonist learns that food holds family secrets that are surrounded by mystery. We are all not only eaters but "readers" of what we eat.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am currently working on a volume on dictionaries as windows that allow us to understand how nations define themselves.
I am also doing a new translation into English of La Celestina, a canonical 15th-century Converso novel that explores how love and religion were played out in medieval times.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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