by SAWDAYAH BROWNLEE
“We are blessed, since we can find our ovens and stoves and make up for some of what we long for.”
Mama Ntozake Shange (Ibaye), If I Can Cook/You Know God Can
To be in love with the foodways of my people, needing to be with those who still speak in our tongues, requiring nourishment from the stories of our journeys feels noble and right —until I can’t afford these things. A sense of deep shame casts over me that I cannot call up these experiences whenever I want, that I am limited in my ability to return to them because they have been commodified and capitalist principles require their currency should I wish to fly to their origins or cook up something from home.
Reclaiming my time and money from school loans and medical bills is my small “chin up” rebellion to satisfy these needs and emblazon my Ancestors to work in the After. I have this pep talk with myself every time I choose to buy those graceful lady fingers okra fresh or brown Gulf shrimp fresh for gumbo and shrimp and grits. These foods fed my Ancestors in their articulation of liberation, in their planning for the future of our family, those who helped develop the many battle plans against a regime hellbent on holding them captive. I remember that their blood runs in my veins and I cannot continue these familial goals of liberty to live a life of my choosing, unshackled, for all of our children without these foods. That the preparation of these dishes hearken us to recall our first Mothers from the Senegambia, Sierra Leone, and Angola, tugs at our hearts to re-member how not long ago growing and building and trading lumber, corn, fabric, childcare, sustained our communities.
When I bite into a tender, pink shrimp, seasoned with salt, pepper, celery, paprika and bright with lemon, I return to a day of congregation in my family after church. We’re at tables outside discussing the children growing up and moving on in school, joking with each other, remarking on whether the food tastes like how Grandma would do it. And I don’t feel so lonely. Less of an imposter of myself. Forced migrations and decisions made because the world further encroached on the independence we cultivated on our islands, in our swamps, requires an intentional dedication to tangible parts of home. We invent ways to hold them and enact them to root ourselves in these new places and recognize who we are.