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- Title:
- Husking
- Description:
- Morga wrote that around when Manila City turned 25 years old, native women pounded rice to be cooked by them as part of daily meals that included boiled fish. Women raised pigs and chickens while men did more physically demanding work in fields or while fishing. They kept house for “husbands and parents” and did excellent needlework, spun cotton, wove blankets. Women were the home cooks. Important is the implied status of women described by Morga: When both men and women go to church or take a walk along the streets, they walk with slow dignified steps accompanied by male and female slaves who always carry parasols to protect them from rain and sun. The ladies walk ahead followed by their female servants and slaves, then their husbands, fathers and brothers follow with their male servants and slaves. He also noted that there was high literacy, with natives writing using what we call today baybayin. It is an indigenous script that was used as early as 300 CE. Examples are at the Philippine National Museum of Anthropology. One must see food —its production, collection, preparation, movement — as part of the bigger picture that is a people’s challenge to live life as they wish to.
- Subjects:
- Manila Women Men
- Exhibition:
- Antonio Morga 30
- Source:
- Detail from a painting in JOSE LOZANO: FILIPINAS 1847 by JOSE Maria A. Cariño (Ars Mundi, 2002) Rizal’s annotations of Morga’s book explain that the wooden pestle women use comes in a small size and is not heavy to strain them.
- Type:
- Image;Still Image
- Format:
- image/jpeg
Source
- Preferred Citation:
- "Husking", Philippine Food History, Felice P. Sta. Maria
- Reference Link:
- felicepstamaria.net/items/coll081.html