“When I think about my family I think about food. We love eating and our get-togethers, holidays and birthdays include music, crazy loud laughs, and plenty of food. In most of our houses in the Dominican Republic we have industrial pots, these heavy-duty kitchen utensils made of aluminum. Depending on the occasion we use an industrial pot to make coconut sweets, Dominican Sancocho, and other mouthwatering dishes. 

“Since I was a little girl I remember seeing and using this kind of pot, I had to use a box to reach it and I would help my grandmother stir with a wooden spoon the coconut, sugar and milk, and I remember my first burn as a result of the mix exploding like a volcano while it was cooking. I miss my grandma, her cooking smell, and the way she made me calm. 

“Life in New York is always in a rush, and leaving everything behind was hard. There is hardly space in my Manhattan microscopic apartment and yet we manage to fit our loved pot in a cabinet, but it is still not the same. Maybe after I find my place in this country I will feel at home again, as I felt every time I served myself some food from that gigantic industrial metallic pot.”

– Navrioska

Relationship:  Im/migrant Im/migrant