Natalia Roxas is a Filipina American creative based in Chicago, IL and founder of Filipino Kitchen. Natalia provides strategic direction for the organization. She is the primary architect of Kultura Festival, a four year old Filipino American food and arts festival and the organization’s largest event of the year, with over 1,000 attendees. Natalia is responsible for the photography that appears on the organization’s blog and Filipino Kitchen Instagram account, which has over 13,000 followers. Natalia is a food, travel and culture photographer, and her work has been celebrated most recently by the Field Museum, the National Mall of Washington DC and published in Teen Vogue, among others. She is a graduate of Full Sail University, and the Feet In Two Worlds podcasting program. Her work and photography can be found on the Filipino Kitchen website, and on her personal Instagram, @nataliawanders.

Batok
By Maika Llaneza

The sound of sharp boar’s teeth hammered onto my flesh was surprisingly therapeutic. I felt a wonderful calmness while my husband and a fellow Filipinx American hand stretched my skin and my mambabatok left these permanent soot marks symbolizing powerful ancestral messages.