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From Mothers to Mothers—preserving centuries of postpartum wisdom
April 7, 2018 @ 12:30 pm - 2:00 pm
CHSA is proud to present “From mothers to mothers: preserving centuries of postpartum wisdom” on Saturday, April 7, 2018 from 12:30-2:00pm, presented by Dr. Marilyn Wong and the UC Berkeley Mothers to Mothers Cultural Ambassadors. This event will also feature a unique food tasting of the quintessential Cantonese postpartum dish of ginger-vinegar-pig-feet-and-eggs.
Giving birth and recovering from the birthing process are certainly not new phenomena. Women throughout the ages have had to nourish themselves back to health, as well as to ensure that there is sufficient breast milk for the newborn. Humans survived and thrived because women not only learned how to care for themselves but also learned how to pass this knowledge on to the next generation of mothers. This maternal wisdom is often concentrated in the preparation of postpartum soups and dishes. The Chinese have maintained these traditions through centuries of migration.
From Mothers to Mothers is an undergraduate student project based at UC Berkeley that initially focused on the postpartum recipes of immigrant and refugee Asian American Pacific Islander women. The group successfully published in April 2017, a well-received multicultural and multilingual recipe book that features postpartum recipes written in Korean, H’mong, Cambodian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Tagalog and translated into English. The book received over 10,000 likes on NPR’s Facebook page on the first day alone when it was featured on NPR (“For Centuries, These Asian Recipes Have Helped New Moms Recover From Childbirth,” April 2, 2017).
From Mothers to Mothers is currently developing a website (m2mpostpartum.org) that hosts postpartum recipes and stories from women from all over the world. This website will soon be available to new mothers and to others in their exploration of multicultural postpartum experience.
Seating is limited—RSVP at Eventbrite. Tickets include admission to CHSA’s Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion exhibition and the Yick Gallery featuring Frank Wong’s Chinatown miniature dioramas and art by James Leong and Stella Wong.