Kitchens Of Hope – Lee Svitak Dean (1)

Strain and serve each cup of tea with a generous splash of cream and a spoon of sugar, if preferred. Thekla Rura-Polley came to the United States as a student, planning to return to Germany after her studies. Thirty-three years later, living in the United States, she notes with a laugh that her international moves satisfied two of her life’s dreams: to see the Grand Canyon and to hear the world’s largest church organ, an instrument she had studied.

Thekla grew up near Dillenburg, in western Germany, a historic town where she attended Wilhelm-von-Oranien-Schule, founded in 1537. After graduating from college, a scholarship offered her the opportunity to study abroad. She remembered a film about the Grand Canyon that she had seen in grade school, which influenced her decision to study in the United States. She landed 1,650 miles east of the Grand Canyon in Madison, Wisconsin, where she earned a master’s degree and then a PhD in business administration.

While there, she did what most German students in the United States do and traveled five thousand miles visiting national parks: Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Mesa Verde, and yes, the Grand Canyon. After completing her degrees, she received an email from a professor suggesting a job opportunity. He had been located in Scotland and that appealed to her because it was closer to her home in Germany.

However, to her surprise, the professor had relocated to Australia. Ever the adventurer and interested in working with this professor (as well as hearing the world’s largest church organ, which at the time was in Sydney), Thekla and her American-born husband packed their bags and moved to Australia. To ensure that both could work in Australia, they applied for, and received, permanent resident status there. Six years later, and by then the parents of a daughter, they returned to the United States and moved to Minnesota to be closer to her husband’s family.

Thekla was granted permanent resident alien status in the United States, though her children insist she does not look at all like the typical alien featured in movies. For the past fifteen years, Thekla has focused on development for community and human rights organizations, most recently as director of development for the Advocates for Human Rights. “The people we see here as clients are the few who were able to leave,” she says.

“It’s ‘survivor’ bias. They were strong enough to walk for hundreds or even thousands of miles. They may have survived trafficking or whatever happened to them at the borders. They often can draw on their resilience and strength.” As an immigrant in two countries, Thekla affirms their value. “Together we make the community more vibrant, we enlarge the economy, and we enlarge the pie so that everybody can partake of it.”

The University of Minnesota Press gratefully acknowledges assistance provided for the publication of this book by the John K. and Elsie Lampert Fesler Fund. For the sake of uniformity, the recipes have been standardized to the style common in U.S. cookbooks. Copyright 2025 by Linda S. Svitak, Christin Jaye Eaton, and Lee Svitak Dean Photographs, unless otherwise stated, copyright 2024 by Tom Wallace.

Other photography credits: page 5 from Doris Parker; page 56 from Ghulam Jamili; pages 66 and 67 from Thekla Rura-Polley; page 82 from Nordic Waffles; page 87 from Margaret McLean; page 107 from Nick Rapaz; page 116 from Stephanie Willman Bordat; page 145 from Yia Vang. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, utilized for purposes of training artificial intelligence technologies, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401–2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu ISBN 978-1-4529-7292-3 (ebook) A Cataloging-in-Publication record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer. OceanofPDF.com To all those who have traveled great distances in search of better lives OceanofPDF.com Across the street from my office in Washington, D.C., is the National Archives, and there are the documents of the creation of our country. You can read the whole thing, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights.

But when you go and you read those three words, “We the People,” if you keep repeating “We the People, We the People, We the People, We the People,” you learn that these are three very important words. Everyone should remember that “We the People” is who we are as Americans. All the people. A nation of inclusion, not exclusion. —José Andrés, immigrant, chef, humanitarian • • • • Cuisine cannot exist without the free and fair movement of ingredients, ideas, and people.

Deliciousness is an undeniable benefit of immigration. When people move around, food gets better.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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• Title: –
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