Highlighting the Nayarit restaurant that her grandmother, Doña Natalia Barraza opened in 1951 in Echo Park, Natalia Molina's talk is about place, family and community. Interviewed by Nancy Zaslavsky, Molina discusses how Mexican immigrants who congregated at the Nayarit hungry for flavor memories and language of home were attempting to carve out a niche for themselves in their new homeland. Those who worked and ate at the Nayarit, were not only putting food onto the table or into their mouths, they were establishing links with one another and creating neighborhood.

Natalia Molina is a Distinguished Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity and Dean's Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at USC. Her research explores the interconnected histories of race, place, gender, culture, and citizenship. Her most recent book is A Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community, on immigrant workers as “placemakers” who nurtured and fed the community through the restaurants they established, which served as urban anchors. In addition to publishing widely in scholarly journals Professor Molina is a MacArthur Fellow. She enjoys opportunities for intellectual and cultural exchange, whether in the classroom, lecture hall, or over a restaurant table.