WORKIN' ROOTS: ON THE IMPORTANCE OF A SHARED ORAL HISTORY

Reposted March 20, 2019, original interview by Gabrielle Etienne March 22, 2018

WORKIN' ROOTS: ON THE IMPORTANCE OF A SHARED ORAL HISTORY

A friend of mine who was born and raised on Sapelo Island, in a lush and self-sufficient Gullah community they call “Hog Hammock,” once shared something with me I will never forget. He said the old folks used to say: “You don’t plant anything in the ground until you see the pecan trees bloom.” I asked why the pecan tree and his response was, “it’s one of the oldest and wisest, and it knows when the season’s last frost has hit.”

   

 Dr. Jessica B. Harris discusses the sharing of agricultural knowledge and the complicated culinary implications of the African Diaspora

This wasn’t something he learned in school; it was something he learned from his father, and his father from his father, all by word of mouth. When I think back to the fullness of their citrus trees, weighed down and overflowing with fruit, or to their ability to not only maintain their abundant crops but to share them with others, I started to consider this as fact over folklore.

This all makes me wonder how many other things go unwritten and are eventually lost. Recipes, traditions, names, and full histories can be at risk of becoming null and void until someone takes notice and gives them life for another generation. In Mali, the Griots were the storytellers that shared the land’s history. They were advisors to the king, and they memorized all of a village's significant events—births, death, marriages, seasons, wars—ensuring that the collective culture and lineage of each clan continued. This oral inheritance has been a way of life throughout the African Diaspora for centuries, but who are the storytellers now?

I recently sat down with Dr. Jessica B. Harris, one of these modern storytellers, to discuss our vast, interesting, and colorful history. But that rich color isn’t without pain too, and we also discussed some of the stigmas caught in the misunderstanding of our history. Over a glass of wine, I gifted her some okra seeds in a small silk pouch collected from my family’s garden and soon-to-be homestead in North Carolina. We both took a sip and deeply breathed into my first question:

You made the statement once that African-Americans might be the only people that demonize their own food. What exactly did you mean by that?

Our traditional food comes out of our history, and when I say “our,” I’m talking about "up from the south" African-Americans, who are here not as immigrants but as a result of enslavement. It’s not all of us that demonize our food (I don’t think you do, that’s why you gave me those okra seeds, and I don’t think I do, which is why I’ve got okra on the front of my business card and watermelon on the back) but we often demonize our food, I think, because ours is such a difficult and torturous history.

Because it involves unspeakable pain. Because it involves us making the best of stuff that was not even given to us but thrown at us. It's an easy thing to say, “that's not my food, I don't eat pig's feet.” But the reality is if somebody hadn't eaten that then, we wouldn't be here today. So, we at least need to honor the journey that they had to take and acknowledge that we stand on their shoulders. I am not here to be an advocate for chitlins, but we do have to acknowledge that that's the food that enabled survival then. That food enabled me to be here and eat lamb chops, or for someone to be vegan.

That's the stuff that allowed it to happen, and we should not demonize it.