About Me
Sarah Portnoy, PhD
I am a documentary filmmaker, food justice advocate, and a Food Studies professor at the University of Southern California. For the past 15 years, I've been deeply engaged in teaching Latinx food culture and food justice, with a focus on Los Angeles and beyond. Over the last three years, my work has expanded into producing documentary films that capture the stories of Mexican grandmothers, highlighting their connections to food and migration.
My journey into teaching about Latinx food culture is rooted in my own multicultural upbringing. Though I grew up in Houston, Texas, Cuban food and music were integral to my childhood. My family's history of migration from Nicolaev, Russia (now Ukraine) to Cuba in the 1920s, escaping the Russian Revolution, played a significant role in shaping my cultural identity. My father spent summers in Cuba with his grandparents, and the flavors and sounds of Cuba were always present in our home.
After graduating from Emory University, I moved to Seville, Spain, where I took graduate courses at the university. It was there that a class on Spanish oral traditions changed the course of my life. I found myself recording elderly women in small villages as they sang scandalous ballads passed down through generations. This experience ignited my passion for fieldwork, leading me back to the United States to pursue a PhD in Romance Languages and Literature at UC Berkeley.
But how does one go from ballads to tacos? When I moved to Los Angeles in 2007 to teach at USC, I was struck by the rich Latinx food culture surrounding the campus—panaderías, pupuserías, taquerías, and more. Yet, I noticed that my Spanish students had few opportunities to use the language in real-world settings. In response, I created a course in 2011 called “The Culture of Food in Latino Los Angeles,” where students could engage directly with the Latinx community, practicing their Spanish and learning about the culture through its food.
As I guided students to Latinx eateries near campus, I became increasingly aware of the lack of access to affordable, healthy food in the surrounding neighborhoods. This realization led me to focus my research and teaching on Food Justice, particularly in the fight to legalize street vending in Los Angeles. My involvement with the Los Angeles Food Policy Council’s efforts culminated in my 2016 book, Food, Health, and Culture in Latino Los Angeles (Rowman & Littlefield Studies in Food and Gastronomy) and a front-page article, L.A.'s Street Vendors Aren't Giving Up the Fight for Food Cart Legalization - LA Weekly on the struggle of Los Angeles’ street vendors for legalization.
My research in Food Studies has opened many doors. In 2022, I curated the “Abuelita’s Kitchen: Mexican Food Stories” exhibition at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes in Downtown Los Angeles. This exhibition featured ten remarkable Mexican and Mexican-American grandmothers, and I also produced a documentary film to share their stories.
https://laplazacocina.org/exhibit/abuelitas-kitchen-mexican-food-stories/
In 2022, I was honored to receive a National Endowment for the Humanities Media Production grant to co-produce a documentary film series about Mexican grandmothers in the Borderlands. This series, set in El Paso, Tucson, San Diego, and Los Angeles, highlights the lives of twelve incredible women, capturing their stories and the culinary traditions they cherish.