Dirty Kitchen - by Jill Damatac (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

"Searing...Jill Damatac tells the story of a fight for survival and culture in America." --The New York Times "A fiercely honest, eye-opening view of one undocumented family's experiences trying to start over in a new world." --The San Francisco Chronicle 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.

Review Quotes

"A searing memoir. I love how Damatac integrates recipes into her narrative; food occupies a substantial portion of the immigrant identity." -Vivek Shankar, The New York Times "This unblinking . . . fierce book may include chapters named "Spamsilog" and "Halo-Halo," but the author makes no effort to lull the reader into complicity.. . . . There are no shortcuts; Damatac and her recipes are not here for your convenience. ... The recipes that intersperse the text serve as both escape and reminder, toggling between the ancient past of Indigenous myth, layers of colonial scarring, childhood, the present. ... And yet, she persevered. She observed and studied from her vantage point between worlds. .... This is not an easy memoir, nor should it be. Damatac writes, she says, 'to document myself into existence.' And, as she says of some of her recipes, it will serve many." -Sadie Stein, The New York Times Book Review

About the Author

Jill Damatac is a writer and filmmaker born in the Philippines, raised in the US, and now a UK citizen, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Jill is a 2026 Haymarket Books and Mellon Foundation Writing Freedom Fellow and 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.