‘Salvisoul’ Author Launches Workshop for Immigrant Storytelling

Karla Tatiana Vasquez, the James Beard–nominated author of Salvisoul, made history when her 2024 cookbook became the first Salvadoran title published by a major U.S. publisher. Now, she’s expanding that work with a new writing workshop to empower others in her community to tell their own stories.

Her latest project is an intimate, three-week writing workshop focused on food storytelling called “Híjole y Café.” The class, which launched its first cohort in March, meets once a week for 90 minutes and is designed to help participants leave with a finished draft rooted in their own memories.

“The goal is for everyone to have a completed work, maybe not super polished, but this is the draft that will eventually be the thing that you really pour time into,” Vasquez, a trained journalist, chef, and food historian, tells The Latino Newsletter.

The workshop marks a next step for Vasquez, whose work has long centered on documenting Salvadoran food and the women who preserve it. Now, she is teaching others how to build their own food stories using that same approach.

It comes at a time when Latinos make up about one in five people in the U.S., but continue to remain underrepresented in the media, according to U.S. Census estimates. A 2023 study from the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute found they were the focus of just 2 percent of daily newspaper coverage — a gap that reflects who gets visibility and who doesn’t.

That gap extends to food media.

When Vasquez began working on Salvisoul, she found little published material documenting Salvadoran cooking in the United States — most existing cookbooks were self-published or difficult to find, according to a 2024 Los Angeles Times article.

It took years to find an agent and secure a deal with publishers. 

“I couldn't believe when I was pitching the book was, ‘Where in Mexico is El Salvador?’ Like constantly realizing there is just no work for me here,” says Vasquez of her experience navigating the world of food media and publishing. “Once you finally get a foot in the door, there is this feeling of you're too much, or can't you do something a little bit less this and something that viewers would want to make for brunch, and at the same time, you’re not enough, you’re not marketable enough in this way.”

That tension is not unique.

When I was the Detroit city editor at Eater, one of the projects I initiated with its national site was a recurring column called Hay Comida en la Casa to help increase the number of Latino bylines at the publication. 

I recall internal conversations following the launch, comparing Latino representation somewhere in the range of around 5 to 7 percent — far below the share of the U.S. population. The column contributed to a noticeable increase in Latino bylines, bringing representation closer to the communities the publication was covering.

The goal was not just to increase numbers, but to create space. In a 2024 newsletter promoting the initiative, I described the project as a space “for exploration, for the Latinx community to celebrate our traditions, and to help each other feel seen — not to prove our worth to the outside world, but for our own healing.”

The intention behind that work mirrors what Vasquez has been building for years, and she carries that same ethos through her workshop.

Participants meet in a small group so each person has time to share. The sessions draw from exercises she developed while working on Salvisoul, including techniques for identifying specific memories and building narrative from small, revealing details.

“If you are an immigrant in any country, your story is already an odyssey. Forget trying to prove that your story is important. It is already important,” Vasquez says. “So what are some nugget experiences that we can really hone in on?” Often, she explains, a 30-second flash decision can reveal how a person carries themselves in this world.

That approach grows from hearing stories around the family dinner table.

Vasquez’s family fled El Salvador’s civil war when she was just a baby, according to that same 2024 Los Angeles Times article. Those stories — often tied to food — helped keep her connected to her birthplace. The 12-year conflict, which began in 1980, was marked by widespread violence and forced many families like hers to flee the country.

Those early experiences shaped how she approached interviews for her book.

She met with women multiple times. Sat with their stories for years. Paid attention to the recipes that might otherwise be overlooked.

One of those recipes was for tortillas con leche, a simple dish made by tearing up a thick Salvadoran tortilla and soaking and mushing it up in warm milk, then finishing it with a sprinkle of salt. It is often eaten for breakfast, and in many families, considered too humble to document.

At a talk in Oakland, a man in the audience pointed to that recipe and asked her why she included it. It was the final question of the night, and his tone carried a kind of intensity — something between frustration and recognition.

He told her he had never seen that dish written down before. Not in a cookbook. Not anywhere.

For Vasquez, the dish held the weight of memory of early mornings, labor, and a way of feeding a family with what was available.

For him, it was about recognition.

It was the first time he had seen something so familiar to him reflected back on the page of a book.

According to Vasquez, including tortillas con leche in Salvisoul is really about sharing a story of survival.

“All the women in my family have worked in picking coffee and picking corn or sugar, and that is backbreaking work,” Vasquez says. “This meal was really how we saved our lives. And my great grandmother, that’s her on a plate.”

The workshop is not designed to lead participants toward a single outcome. Some may publish their work. Others may keep it within their families.

What matters is the act of finishing.

“We don’t get to see more completed works of art from my community,” she says. “I’m happy to contribute to that.”

Serena Maria Daniels is a Chicana journalist based in Detroit and the founder of Midwest Mexican. Her bylines have appeared in Reuters, NPR, HuffPost, the Chicago Tribune, and The Detroit News, and she is the former editor of Eater Detroit and the founder of Tostada Magazine.

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