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Table of Contents
About The Book
In the style of Crying in H Mart and Minor Feelings, filmmaker Jill Damatac blends memoir, food writing, and colonial history as she cooks her way through recipes from her native-born Philippines and shares stories of her undocumented family in America.
Jill Damatac left the United States in 2015 after living there as an undocumented immigrant with her family for twenty-two years. America was the only home she knew, where invisibility had become her identity and where poverty, domestic violence, ill health, and xenophobia were everyday experiences.
First traveling to her native Philippines, Damatac eventually settled in London, England, where she was free to pursue an education at the University of Cambridge, fully investigate her roots, and process what happened to her and her family. After nine years, she was granted British citizenship, and returned to the United States, for the first time without fear of deportation or retribution.
Damatac weaves together forgotten colonial history and long-buried Indigenous tradition, taking us through her time in America, and cooking her way through Filipino recipes in her kitchen as she searches for a sense of self and renewed possibility. With emotional intelligence, clarity, and grace, Dirty Kitchen explores fractured memories to ask questions of identity, colonialism, immigration, and belonging, and to find ways in which the ritual, tradition, and comfort of food can answer them.
Jill Damatac left the United States in 2015 after living there as an undocumented immigrant with her family for twenty-two years. America was the only home she knew, where invisibility had become her identity and where poverty, domestic violence, ill health, and xenophobia were everyday experiences.
First traveling to her native Philippines, Damatac eventually settled in London, England, where she was free to pursue an education at the University of Cambridge, fully investigate her roots, and process what happened to her and her family. After nine years, she was granted British citizenship, and returned to the United States, for the first time without fear of deportation or retribution.
Damatac weaves together forgotten colonial history and long-buried Indigenous tradition, taking us through her time in America, and cooking her way through Filipino recipes in her kitchen as she searches for a sense of self and renewed possibility. With emotional intelligence, clarity, and grace, Dirty Kitchen explores fractured memories to ask questions of identity, colonialism, immigration, and belonging, and to find ways in which the ritual, tradition, and comfort of food can answer them.
About The Author
Courtesy of the Author
Jill Damatac is a writer and filmmaker born in the Philippines, raised in the US, and now a UK citizen. Her film and photography work has been featured on the BBC and in Time, and at film festivals worldwide; her short documentary film Blood and Ink (Dugo at Tinta), about the Indigenous Filipino tattooist Apo Whang Od, was an official selection at the Academy Award–qualifying DOC NYC and won Best Documentary at Ireland’s Kerry Film Festival. Jill holds an MSt in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge and an MA in Documentary Film from the University of the Arts London. Follow her on Instagram @JillDamatac.
Product Details
- Publisher: Atria/One Signal Publishers (May 6, 2025)
- Length: 256 pages
- ISBN13: 9781668084656
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Raves and Reviews
“A hard journey to freedom. Damatac weaves history, mythology, and recipes into an affecting memoir of abuse, grief, longing, and frustration.”
—Kirkus Reviews
"Dirty Kitchen is not only an astonishing memoir—it is a bravura juggling act of genre, and a vivid testament to resilience. An absolute marvel."
—Jose Antonio Vargas, bestselling author of Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen
“Part personal memoir, part cultural analysis, and all heart, Dirty Kitchen invites us into Jill Damatac's searing journey from decades of undocumented invisibility through the slow and recursive process of healing. Vulnerable and gripping, Damatac's debut explores what it means to reclaim one's life from the jaws of generational trauma and colonialism, while honoring the great ancestral gifts of Filipino heritage. Dirty Kitchen heralds the arrival of an unforgettable new talent. This book will make you cry, laugh, and hunger for more, and Damatac's wisdoms will leave you forever changed.”
—Qian Julie Wang, New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Country
“There's a blue fire to Jill Damatac's way with words. In Dirty Kitchen, history itself burns sapphire bright.”
—Saeed Jones, author of Alive at the End of the World and How We Fight For Our Lives
“Dirty Kitchen is a feast of many ingredients: at once a searing, heartfelt account of one undocumented family’s life as told through dish after mouthwatering dish, as well as a fierce, unflinching look at the indigenous and colonial history that seasons every meal. This is a book that knows that the root of the word ‘recipe’ is ‘to receive’—one that shows us, with profound resolve and tenderness, all the things we receive with every meal: every pleasure, every pain, every story, every ghost. A book to sate multiple hungers, that leaves its reader truly fed.”
—Elaine Castillo, author of America Is Not The Heart
“As nimble and bold as the dishes she describes, Jill Damatac confronts the intersectional cruelties of colonialism and patriarchy with an unflinching spirit. Damatac celebrates the resilience of Filipino food as an ingredient for healing passed down through the ancestors. Dirty Kitchen is a literary feast that sticks to your fingers like a sumptuous kamayan.”
—Albert Samaha, author of Concepcion: Conquest, Colonialism, and an Immigrant Family’s Fate
"Jill Damatac brings together myth and memory, history and hauntings, colonialism and catharsis and seats them around her table. Any reader of Dirty Kitchen is in for a feast when they pull up a chair."
—Alejandra Oliva, author of Rivermouth: A Chronicle of Language, Faith and Migration
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- Book Cover Image (jpg): Dirty Kitchen eBook 9781668084656
- Author Photo (jpg): Jill Damatac Courtesy of the Author(0.1 MB)
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