Tijuana Maid: Food novel 3
1976

Serial postcard novel in twelve parts, first mailed between October 1975 and February 1976

In the mid-1970s, Rosler created three “food novels,” each a set of typewritten postcards sent to friends and others in weekly installments. In all three, the interconnections of food, women and labor are central. Delivered by mail, the cards mediate between the interior space of the home and the external network of the postal system. Each pause before the arrival of the next card is time in which the communication could unfold and reverberate.

The third food novel, in Spanish, draws on newspaper articles as well as conversations with women “on both sides of the mistress-servant relationship” to tell the story of a Mexican woman who seeks work in the United States. Leaving her children behind in Tijuana, she takes a series of domestic jobs, crossing and recrossing the border, always at risk of detention by border guards. She endures withheld wages, sexual assault, and the condescension of white patronas who speak to her with the help of a book called Home Maid Spanish. The novel includes two recipes, one for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and one for stuffed chili peppers “with sauce for a Party.” The title card, the last in the set, notes that the work was translated into Spanish by a group of Rosler's friends and that for a small sum the author will send an English version of it.