1 00:00:30,160 --> 00:00:31,320 Good afternoon. 2 00:00:31,320 --> 00:00:34,360 Today, something like May 26th or 7th. 3 00:00:34,520 --> 00:00:37,520 I'm sitting with Psyche Williams-Forson 4 00:00:38,360 --> 00:00:40,480 and talking 5 00:00:40,480 --> 00:00:43,720 to her about ASFS and her relationship to it. 6 00:00:44,320 --> 00:00:47,120 So to start out, can you give me a little 7 00:00:47,120 --> 00:00:51,080 I know you, really first from Southern Foodways 8 00:00:51,400 --> 00:00:54,760 as one of the first 50 founders of Southern Foodways. 9 00:00:55,240 --> 00:00:59,760 Is that how you found your way into ASFS or food studies? 10 00:01:00,040 --> 00:01:03,560 Can you talk a little bit about how you come to be where you are? 11 00:01:04,120 --> 00:01:06,480 Sure. Thank you. 12 00:01:06,480 --> 00:01:07,720 Yeah. 13 00:01:07,720 --> 00:01:10,960 Psyche Williams-Forson and so, 14 00:01:11,920 --> 00:01:14,080 so I started out 15 00:01:14,080 --> 00:01:19,400 in 1991 in graduate school, 16 00:01:20,920 --> 00:01:24,400 studying Black women's literature. 17 00:01:26,040 --> 00:01:28,360 I was in the Department of American Studies 18 00:01:28,360 --> 00:01:30,400 at the University of Maryland, College Park, 19 00:01:31,520 --> 00:01:34,600 but I returned to graduate school 20 00:01:34,760 --> 00:01:37,840 at what is called a watershed moment, right, 21 00:01:38,000 --> 00:01:41,000 of Black feminist studies. 22 00:01:41,760 --> 00:01:45,120 Alice Walker, had introduced us 23 00:01:45,120 --> 00:01:48,120 to Zora Neale Hurston maybe a decade earlier. 24 00:01:48,880 --> 00:01:51,040 She had a robust, 25 00:01:51,040 --> 00:01:54,920 you know, set of publications. 26 00:01:54,920 --> 00:01:59,760 Mary Helen Washington had recovered a number of Black women's early work. 27 00:02:00,720 --> 00:02:03,440 The Schomburg 28 00:02:03,440 --> 00:02:06,440 and Henry Louis Gates had just republished 29 00:02:07,080 --> 00:02:11,480 a set of 19th century Black women's literary texts. 30 00:02:12,120 --> 00:02:15,320 And so I entered graduate school at that moment. 31 00:02:18,600 --> 00:02:21,520 It was also that fall, 32 00:02:21,520 --> 00:02:24,280 the year of Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas. 33 00:02:24,280 --> 00:02:28,880 So I was coming into graduate school at a very interesting moment. 34 00:02:28,920 --> 00:02:31,760 I was very interested in Black women's work. 35 00:02:31,760 --> 00:02:37,120 And got introduced to a set of women 36 00:02:37,120 --> 00:02:41,240 at University of Maryland campus called the Sister Scholars. 37 00:02:41,240 --> 00:02:44,240 And, several of them, 38 00:02:44,360 --> 00:02:47,080 took me under their wing, essentially. 39 00:02:48,200 --> 00:02:49,360 And became 40 00:02:49,360 --> 00:02:52,280 very much needed, appreciated mentors. 41 00:02:52,280 --> 00:02:55,280 So I really started delving into, 42 00:02:55,360 --> 00:02:59,480 this work by these early 43 00:02:59,480 --> 00:03:02,920 or 19th century Black women writers, Andrew Cooper, 44 00:03:03,360 --> 00:03:08,000 Victoria Early Matthews and one in particular was Pauline Hopkins. 45 00:03:08,000 --> 00:03:13,840 She wrote the book, Contending Forces, which was a novel 46 00:03:13,840 --> 00:03:16,960 that had been serialized in the 47 00:03:16,960 --> 00:03:19,960 then journal The Colored American. 48 00:03:20,800 --> 00:03:23,560 And I really enjoyed Hopkins's novel. 49 00:03:23,560 --> 00:03:28,520 It's about a boarding house in Boston at the turn of the century. 50 00:03:29,560 --> 00:03:34,000 And what I was captivated by in reading 51 00:03:34,000 --> 00:03:37,800 the novel was the amount of detail that Hopkins used to 52 00:03:39,000 --> 00:03:42,560 give us this portrait, of politics, of, 53 00:03:43,040 --> 00:03:47,320 you know, race based issues at the moment of women's roles, 54 00:03:47,320 --> 00:03:51,280 Black women's roles of class dynamics, you name it. 55 00:03:51,280 --> 00:03:52,600 It's all in there, right? 56 00:03:54,640 --> 00:03:57,720 Sexuality and the ways 57 00:03:57,720 --> 00:04:00,760 in which Colourism tied into that and so forth. 58 00:04:02,200 --> 00:04:04,680 So I, I really started out on this quest 59 00:04:04,680 --> 00:04:09,680 by just really examining what was happening in the novel. 60 00:04:09,680 --> 00:04:14,320 And one thing in particular that happened was a church fair took place, 61 00:04:14,920 --> 00:04:18,520 and the two women were competing 62 00:04:18,520 --> 00:04:22,600 for these prizes, while lots of people were competing for these prizes. 63 00:04:22,600 --> 00:04:25,600 But two of the women were competing for the piano 64 00:04:26,800 --> 00:04:30,400 and one of the women 65 00:04:30,400 --> 00:04:35,440 sent to the South to get a possum, and she made a possum dinner. 66 00:04:35,760 --> 00:04:38,920 And so I was like, is that such a thing you know possum. 67 00:04:39,880 --> 00:04:42,880 Of course, if you look at Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, 68 00:04:43,240 --> 00:04:46,720 Vibration Cooking, there's a recipe for possum and taters. 69 00:04:46,720 --> 00:04:49,840 So, I was very intrigued by that. 70 00:04:49,840 --> 00:04:52,840 And around the same time, 71 00:04:53,040 --> 00:04:55,240 one of the professors in my department, 72 00:04:56,560 --> 00:04:58,720 needed a researcher. 73 00:04:58,720 --> 00:05:01,120 And it turns out that was Hasia Diner 74 00:05:01,120 --> 00:05:04,280 Hasia Diner. Yeah, right. 75 00:05:04,720 --> 00:05:08,560 Noted Jewish, scholar of Jewish food and culture. 76 00:05:09,120 --> 00:05:11,800 And so I was in, doing some research 77 00:05:11,800 --> 00:05:14,920 for her and on Jewish peddlers. 78 00:05:15,200 --> 00:05:19,360 And I came across this word called foodways, 79 00:05:19,480 --> 00:05:22,800 and I was like, never heard of that wonder if Black people 80 00:05:23,480 --> 00:05:25,280 associated it with food ways. 81 00:05:25,280 --> 00:05:30,200 And so, you know, I internetted that, I that looked it up on the internet, 82 00:05:31,600 --> 00:05:34,600 what I found were recipes. 83 00:05:34,720 --> 00:05:37,000 Jessica Harris. 84 00:05:37,000 --> 00:05:40,480 Vertamae, Miss Vertamae, Miss Edna 85 00:05:40,480 --> 00:05:44,680 Lewis, you know, and I was like, oh, okay, this is foodways. 86 00:05:44,800 --> 00:05:45,480 You know, it's like, 87 00:05:45,480 --> 00:05:49,520 but I see all of this information about what 88 00:05:49,520 --> 00:05:51,760 Black people are eating, but I don't know why. 89 00:05:52,760 --> 00:05:54,400 So, by now we're at 90 00:05:54,400 --> 00:05:58,960 93, and I just started really researching 91 00:05:58,960 --> 00:06:02,560 why Black people are associated with certain foods. 92 00:06:02,800 --> 00:06:05,800 Right? And that took me 93 00:06:05,840 --> 00:06:08,840 into an understanding of, 94 00:06:09,240 --> 00:06:13,600 Black food culture as a form of material culture. 95 00:06:14,960 --> 00:06:18,200 And so by the time we get to 99, 96 00:06:18,200 --> 00:06:21,560 98, 99, when we go to the first SFA, 97 00:06:22,280 --> 00:06:25,240 I have been doing this work for about 7 or 8 years. 98 00:06:25,240 --> 00:06:25,680 Right. 99 00:06:25,680 --> 00:06:30,240 And so go to SFA because it's the Southern Foodways. 100 00:06:30,240 --> 00:06:31,120 Right? 101 00:06:31,120 --> 00:06:35,280 And very fortunate that, 102 00:06:36,360 --> 00:06:39,360 Jessica Harris was there and, 103 00:06:40,320 --> 00:06:43,320 lots of other folks. 104 00:06:43,480 --> 00:06:46,480 And so that's how we formed the, 105 00:06:47,720 --> 00:06:50,560 you know, the alliance, right? 106 00:06:50,560 --> 00:06:53,560 Because we were at the symposium. 107 00:06:53,680 --> 00:06:57,800 So we came together and decided we wanted to formulate an alliance. 108 00:06:58,760 --> 00:06:59,600 And then. 109 00:07:02,160 --> 00:07:04,400 From then I continued to, 110 00:07:04,400 --> 00:07:09,040 participate in southern foodways until 111 00:07:10,800 --> 00:07:13,800 it just became clear to me that 112 00:07:14,920 --> 00:07:17,640 the folks who went to the SFA 113 00:07:17,640 --> 00:07:21,720 or SFS, whichever one you want to call it, we're really interested 114 00:07:21,720 --> 00:07:25,840 in these celebrations of food, which is great, 115 00:07:26,440 --> 00:07:30,040 but they did not really want to engage the critical 116 00:07:31,240 --> 00:07:35,480 element in ways in which food, as you know, in 117 00:07:35,480 --> 00:07:39,160 my work, shows us the ugly side of humanity. 118 00:07:39,400 --> 00:07:41,160 Right? 119 00:07:41,160 --> 00:07:42,240 Food and power. 120 00:07:42,240 --> 00:07:44,680 Food and exploitation. 121 00:07:44,680 --> 00:07:46,400 Food and racism. 122 00:07:46,400 --> 00:07:49,360 Food and death. 123 00:07:49,360 --> 00:07:52,120 You know, Black death, right? 124 00:07:52,120 --> 00:07:53,440 They didn't want to engage that. 125 00:07:53,440 --> 00:07:55,640 And so 126 00:07:55,640 --> 00:07:58,680 I sort of, said, okay, 127 00:07:58,680 --> 00:08:01,720 this is probably not the best place for me 128 00:08:01,720 --> 00:08:04,720 to have 129 00:08:05,040 --> 00:08:08,000 fruitful conversations 130 00:08:08,000 --> 00:08:09,520 around that same time. 131 00:08:09,520 --> 00:08:14,160 I forget how, 132 00:08:14,240 --> 00:08:17,200 I think I reached out to Carole Counihan, actually, 133 00:08:18,760 --> 00:08:20,080 you know, because, 134 00:08:20,080 --> 00:08:23,280 her work around food and gender. 135 00:08:24,160 --> 00:08:26,360 So, I reached out to her and I said, 136 00:08:26,360 --> 00:08:29,360 you know, I'm this graduate student 137 00:08:29,480 --> 00:08:32,480 working on this, this dissertation. 138 00:08:33,040 --> 00:08:35,920 Are you going to Portland for ASFS? 139 00:08:35,920 --> 00:08:37,360 and she said, I am. 140 00:08:37,360 --> 00:08:40,360 And so we decided to meet in Portland 141 00:08:41,280 --> 00:08:43,600 and that one of my first ASFS 142 00:08:43,600 --> 00:08:47,480 I also met Kyla Tompkins in that ASFS 143 00:08:48,200 --> 00:08:51,200 and it was a great experience. 144 00:08:53,120 --> 00:08:55,040 And so that's 145 00:08:55,040 --> 00:08:59,200 when I decided at that time, yeah, I wanted to be involved in ASFS, 146 00:08:59,440 --> 00:09:02,440 and I think I really sort of got going 147 00:09:03,160 --> 00:09:05,280 when we met. It 148 00:09:05,280 --> 00:09:09,280 in Harrisonburg at, Penn State. 149 00:09:09,760 --> 00:09:11,520 Okay. Yeah, I was there. 150 00:09:11,520 --> 00:09:14,560 Yeah, yeah, I met Fabio Parasecoli 151 00:09:15,440 --> 00:09:18,640 And, you know, that's when I really just sort of, 152 00:09:19,240 --> 00:09:24,800 attended the first board meeting for ASFS 153 00:09:26,200 --> 00:09:28,480 and yeah, I was 154 00:09:28,480 --> 00:09:31,480 I was excited, you know, Warren Belasco and 155 00:09:33,360 --> 00:09:35,400 Ken Abala, 156 00:09:35,400 --> 00:09:37,600 you know, had 157 00:09:37,600 --> 00:09:41,960 you had touch with Warren when you were in Maryland prior to that? 158 00:09:42,040 --> 00:09:46,720 You know, I'm trying to remember if I knew Warren beforehand 159 00:09:46,720 --> 00:09:49,920 or we might have met either at Portland or 160 00:09:49,920 --> 00:09:52,920 Penn State. 161 00:09:53,040 --> 00:09:55,920 And yeah, I, I, if I'm not mistaken. 162 00:09:55,920 --> 00:10:00,600 Yeah, Warren was on my committee, so it must have been before 99 163 00:10:00,600 --> 00:10:04,720 that I met these folks because Warren was, on my dissertation committee. 164 00:10:05,560 --> 00:10:06,040 Okay. 165 00:10:06,040 --> 00:10:10,720 And I'm supposed to ask you, you're not from Maryland, are you? 166 00:10:11,240 --> 00:10:13,960 No, I'm actually from Virginia, and 167 00:10:13,960 --> 00:10:16,880 I was born in Farmville, Virginia, 168 00:10:16,880 --> 00:10:20,960 which is a part of, Farmville is located in Prince Edward County, 169 00:10:20,960 --> 00:10:25,480 and Prince Edward County is about, 50 miles south of Richmond. 170 00:10:26,120 --> 00:10:26,920 Okay. 171 00:10:26,920 --> 00:10:31,400 Just very much nestled in and around the Confederacy. 172 00:10:32,200 --> 00:10:36,960 I'm 50 miles south of Richmond, but about 20 miles west of Appomattox. 173 00:10:37,920 --> 00:10:38,920 Okay. 174 00:10:38,920 --> 00:10:41,960 And Farmville was the or 175 00:10:41,960 --> 00:10:46,040 Prince Edward County was the last county to join the Brown 176 00:10:46,040 --> 00:10:49,040 versus Topeka, Kansas 177 00:10:49,120 --> 00:10:50,920 case for, you know, 178 00:10:50,920 --> 00:10:53,920 racial desegregation of schools. 179 00:10:54,160 --> 00:10:59,200 So, all of that had a real 180 00:10:59,960 --> 00:11:03,280 effect, has a real effect on how I see the world. 181 00:11:03,280 --> 00:11:03,640 Right? 182 00:11:03,640 --> 00:11:08,080 Because my parents were very actively involved 183 00:11:08,080 --> 00:11:11,840 in the movement just recently with the passing of my dad. 184 00:11:11,880 --> 00:11:13,960 My mom was 185 00:11:13,960 --> 00:11:16,960 right before them, was sharing with us about 186 00:11:18,520 --> 00:11:20,440 the fear, 187 00:11:20,440 --> 00:11:25,000 the very real fear she experienced because my dad had, 188 00:11:25,080 --> 00:11:28,480 helped to organize 189 00:11:28,480 --> 00:11:34,080 the desegregation of one of the churches in our community. 190 00:11:34,080 --> 00:11:38,560 You know, he was a minister and he got arrested, 191 00:11:38,560 --> 00:11:42,880 as a result of it and taken to a neighboring county 192 00:11:44,000 --> 00:11:46,280 in the middle of the night. 193 00:11:46,280 --> 00:11:50,920 My mom was pregnant with my sister, my youngest sister at that time. 194 00:11:51,440 --> 00:11:53,560 And so they couldn't find them. 195 00:11:53,560 --> 00:11:58,120 You know, and, you know, back in, in this was this late 60s. 196 00:11:58,120 --> 00:11:59,200 That was a very 197 00:12:00,480 --> 00:12:02,880 scary time. 198 00:12:02,880 --> 00:12:03,040 Yeah. 199 00:12:03,040 --> 00:12:04,720 I think it's hard for people to understand. 200 00:12:04,720 --> 00:12:09,680 And really briefly, my mom, in her last year of her life, 201 00:12:10,120 --> 00:12:13,120 confided my she lost her first child, a girl 202 00:12:13,760 --> 00:12:16,840 April, in '54, 203 00:12:17,240 --> 00:12:21,760 and the following April, my brother was born in '55. 204 00:12:22,160 --> 00:12:23,800 So it was joyful. 205 00:12:23,800 --> 00:12:26,320 But then that August, Emmett Till was killed. 206 00:12:26,320 --> 00:12:29,800 And at the end of her life, she told me that her whole life 207 00:12:30,160 --> 00:12:33,960 she was frightened to death that we would be blown away. 208 00:12:34,360 --> 00:12:37,360 Even though Connecticut to Mississippi 209 00:12:37,720 --> 00:12:41,320 is so far afield or seemingly, seemingly 210 00:12:42,040 --> 00:12:44,720 even though I have to say when I was a kid, 211 00:12:44,720 --> 00:12:48,120 one of the heads of the national heads, the Ku Klux Klan, lived in Connecticut. 212 00:12:50,000 --> 00:12:53,000 But this idea that is 213 00:12:53,000 --> 00:12:57,520 I think people have lost sight of it pre-internet pre-computer 214 00:12:57,760 --> 00:13:01,360 this kind of fear real in terms 215 00:13:01,360 --> 00:13:03,840 of your case, of your dad being physically arrested. 216 00:13:04,840 --> 00:13:05,920 Somewhat. 217 00:13:05,920 --> 00:13:09,760 I don't want to say imagined, but, anxious, 218 00:13:09,760 --> 00:13:12,760 at least of my mother as a Black woman. 219 00:13:14,320 --> 00:13:17,080 It was palpable in this country. 220 00:13:17,080 --> 00:13:19,720 Very palpable. Yeah. 221 00:13:19,720 --> 00:13:22,720 And, you know, all of that 222 00:13:23,480 --> 00:13:26,560 I bring to bear on the way in which 223 00:13:26,560 --> 00:13:29,800 I understand how food operates 224 00:13:30,360 --> 00:13:32,800 in American society, 225 00:13:32,800 --> 00:13:35,600 particularly in the lives of Black people. 226 00:13:35,600 --> 00:13:38,600 You know, 227 00:13:38,680 --> 00:13:41,120 because 228 00:13:41,120 --> 00:13:45,160 it is intricately intertwined, right. 229 00:13:45,160 --> 00:13:48,160 When we think about the Gloria Gilmores and, 230 00:13:49,360 --> 00:13:52,840 other women who cooked to fund the movement. 231 00:13:53,920 --> 00:13:56,440 Gloria Gilmore I always get Georgia. 232 00:13:56,440 --> 00:13:58,200 Georgia Gilmore. Yeah. 233 00:13:58,200 --> 00:13:59,320 Yeah I always get that wrong. 234 00:13:59,320 --> 00:14:03,480 When we think about women like Georgia Gilmore and others 235 00:14:03,480 --> 00:14:08,360 who helped to fund those movements, we see that on the national scale. 236 00:14:08,360 --> 00:14:10,840 Like you said, Mississippi and Alabama. 237 00:14:10,840 --> 00:14:15,480 But it was happening in in places like Farmville, in places like Connecticut. 238 00:14:15,520 --> 00:14:15,960 Yeah. 239 00:14:17,120 --> 00:14:21,280 And so food gets very 240 00:14:21,280 --> 00:14:25,560 much intertwined with these legacies of freedom. 241 00:14:26,440 --> 00:14:29,440 Then and and now. 242 00:14:29,720 --> 00:14:30,160 Yeah. 243 00:14:30,160 --> 00:14:33,720 You know, it's interesting you're saying this because as I look 244 00:14:33,720 --> 00:14:38,560 at these questions outline, they're asking what food studies means to you. 245 00:14:38,560 --> 00:14:44,640 And in as an, answer 246 00:14:44,640 --> 00:14:48,360 aspect to that statement Warren had made about 247 00:14:48,600 --> 00:14:51,600 we need to be generalists to study food because we need to have 248 00:14:52,120 --> 00:14:54,720 what now probably is called transinter 249 00:14:54,720 --> 00:14:57,720 multidisciplinary foci. 250 00:14:57,760 --> 00:15:01,240 And personally, I think it is true 251 00:15:01,600 --> 00:15:04,600 for myself that I can't, 252 00:15:05,320 --> 00:15:08,160 especially if you're going to deal with, 253 00:15:08,160 --> 00:15:10,640 broadly speaking, politics, 254 00:15:10,640 --> 00:15:13,720 race, gender, sexual orientation, sexuality. 255 00:15:14,320 --> 00:15:16,280 You have to look at causation. 256 00:15:16,280 --> 00:15:17,320 You have to dig deeper. 257 00:15:17,320 --> 00:15:22,400 You have to be looking at the piano as well as what was on the dinner table. 258 00:15:22,840 --> 00:15:23,440 That's right. 259 00:15:23,440 --> 00:15:25,840 And what it cost to get that piano in the house? 260 00:15:25,840 --> 00:15:28,440 That's right. What it costs and how you how you paid for that. 261 00:15:28,440 --> 00:15:29,920 I mean, come back to 262 00:15:31,000 --> 00:15:32,920 Hopkins's work over and over 263 00:15:32,920 --> 00:15:37,040 because there's an interesting message in that work in that 264 00:15:38,680 --> 00:15:40,120 all of the people 265 00:15:40,120 --> 00:15:43,120 who were participating in the raffle 266 00:15:43,480 --> 00:15:46,480 were trying to get something 267 00:15:46,840 --> 00:15:49,320 for their house. 268 00:15:49,320 --> 00:15:52,880 One woman was had put aside. 269 00:15:53,080 --> 00:15:56,080 She was paying on a, by layaway, 270 00:15:56,160 --> 00:15:58,920 a break front or a sideboard 271 00:15:58,920 --> 00:16:02,000 in anticipation that she was going to win this tea set. 272 00:16:03,680 --> 00:16:07,320 Another person was hoping to win the pocket watch. 273 00:16:07,800 --> 00:16:10,520 And then the ultimate prize was the piano. 274 00:16:10,520 --> 00:16:10,960 Right. 275 00:16:10,960 --> 00:16:17,320 And so these accouterment, if you will, of, of respectability. 276 00:16:17,520 --> 00:16:20,160 Right. 277 00:16:20,160 --> 00:16:22,320 And they were very visible. 278 00:16:22,320 --> 00:16:26,400 And then it came down to these two women who were neck and neck 279 00:16:27,000 --> 00:16:29,800 and the one woman, as I said, 280 00:16:29,800 --> 00:16:34,440 got a possum sent from the south, and she made this possum stew, 281 00:16:35,000 --> 00:16:38,320 but she would not sell the stew to any Black people. 282 00:16:38,320 --> 00:16:40,280 She only sold to the white people. 283 00:16:41,600 --> 00:16:43,120 Literally shut the door and wouldn't 284 00:16:43,120 --> 00:16:46,680 even let the pastor, she wouldn't even let the preacher buy it. 285 00:16:47,720 --> 00:16:49,640 Well you know what happened. 286 00:16:49,640 --> 00:16:52,640 She ultimately lost the race. 287 00:16:52,720 --> 00:16:55,560 So now you've got this moral, 288 00:16:55,560 --> 00:16:59,320 this moral argument around how you cannot, 289 00:17:00,160 --> 00:17:03,160 you know, shut Black people out of 290 00:17:05,320 --> 00:17:08,320 culinary situations that they 291 00:17:09,600 --> 00:17:13,520 are familiar with that give life, if you will, because these 292 00:17:13,520 --> 00:17:16,840 are many of these Black folks who are migrants from the South. 293 00:17:17,600 --> 00:17:20,600 You can't do that and expect to win. 294 00:17:22,120 --> 00:17:25,120 You know, you have to acknowledge 295 00:17:25,120 --> 00:17:28,120 your history and acknowledge your 296 00:17:29,080 --> 00:17:32,800 connections to the homeland. 297 00:17:34,160 --> 00:17:37,320 And so I just found that really, really fascinating. 298 00:17:37,320 --> 00:17:43,000 And you know that type of work really animates me. 299 00:17:43,000 --> 00:17:44,680 And and fuels my soul. 300 00:17:44,680 --> 00:17:49,000 You know, I mean I think about that work a lot 301 00:17:49,040 --> 00:17:52,760 because I talk about the women of Gordonsville 302 00:17:52,760 --> 00:17:54,920 in, in Building Houses Out of Chicken Legs, 303 00:17:55,880 --> 00:17:58,880 black women, food and power. 304 00:17:59,080 --> 00:18:02,440 And these were women who called themselves waiter carriers. 305 00:18:03,360 --> 00:18:06,360 If you look in the census, they may be known as chicken vendors, 306 00:18:06,360 --> 00:18:09,480 but they called themselves waiter carriers and it's because, 307 00:18:10,080 --> 00:18:14,680 as you know, Doctor Leni Sorensen said, you know, they were doing this 308 00:18:14,680 --> 00:18:18,480 particular kind of work that you saw waiters do, right? 309 00:18:18,480 --> 00:18:20,840 They were preparing these foods. 310 00:18:20,840 --> 00:18:21,800 We don't know where. 311 00:18:21,800 --> 00:18:24,520 We don't know how long it took them to get there. 312 00:18:24,520 --> 00:18:26,520 We don't know 313 00:18:26,520 --> 00:18:29,240 where they sourced their ingredients from. 314 00:18:29,240 --> 00:18:31,800 But it's it's a fascinating story. 315 00:18:31,800 --> 00:18:35,720 And they sold their foods at the, at the, train depot. 316 00:18:36,160 --> 00:18:39,440 But what to me is very interesting is 317 00:18:40,160 --> 00:18:43,160 we know very little about these women, 318 00:18:43,840 --> 00:18:48,280 but we know a lot about Edna Lewis, who comes from the same place. 319 00:18:49,720 --> 00:18:51,240 Except Lewis 320 00:18:51,240 --> 00:18:54,920 was from Freetown and Freetown is in Orange County. 321 00:18:55,960 --> 00:18:59,320 And so one of the things that is on my list 322 00:18:59,560 --> 00:19:03,240 as I work toward this next project around the piano is 323 00:19:03,240 --> 00:19:07,040 what's the distance between Gordonville and Freetown? The, 324 00:19:08,480 --> 00:19:11,200 you know, did these women possibly know each other? 325 00:19:11,200 --> 00:19:11,680 Right? 326 00:19:11,680 --> 00:19:14,960 And so I talk a little bit about what happens 327 00:19:14,960 --> 00:19:17,960 when we allow 328 00:19:19,200 --> 00:19:21,520 1 or 2 black people to be 329 00:19:21,520 --> 00:19:24,520 held up as this sort of standard. 330 00:19:24,520 --> 00:19:26,520 Right? 331 00:19:26,520 --> 00:19:28,920 As the model 332 00:19:28,920 --> 00:19:31,600 when there's so many other names that we need 333 00:19:31,600 --> 00:19:34,680 to be focusing on and uncovering and unpacking. 334 00:19:34,880 --> 00:19:36,760 Right. 335 00:19:36,760 --> 00:19:37,880 It's a big question. 336 00:19:37,880 --> 00:19:40,880 It's a big question. Right. Because, 337 00:19:41,200 --> 00:19:44,080 I mean, Tony Tipton Martin did a lot of this work right? 338 00:19:44,080 --> 00:19:49,560 In The Jemima Code, where she unpacked all of these cookbook authors 339 00:19:50,000 --> 00:19:54,760 I don't know about, but we got to put them in conversation with what was happening 340 00:19:55,760 --> 00:19:59,160 in the orbit of people like Edna Lewis. 341 00:19:59,240 --> 00:20:00,280 Right. 342 00:20:00,280 --> 00:20:00,680 Yeah. 343 00:20:00,680 --> 00:20:04,360 That's the where that work needs to go to the next level. 344 00:20:04,360 --> 00:20:07,360 But I think it's because she comes more out of journalism. 345 00:20:07,720 --> 00:20:09,640 Oh, absolutely. 346 00:20:09,640 --> 00:20:11,360 I mean, no, the book is awesome. 347 00:20:11,360 --> 00:20:13,960 I was like, yeah, yeah, but necessary resource. 348 00:20:13,960 --> 00:20:16,000 And I'm saying 349 00:20:16,000 --> 00:20:18,760 she she gives us the name she gives us. 350 00:20:18,760 --> 00:20:20,280 Yeah I agree. 351 00:20:20,280 --> 00:20:22,120 All of these authors. Right. 352 00:20:22,120 --> 00:20:25,120 And what so 353 00:20:25,200 --> 00:20:27,560 we have a mantle or a sort of 354 00:20:27,560 --> 00:20:30,560 challenge ahead of us to 355 00:20:30,880 --> 00:20:33,160 expose 356 00:20:33,160 --> 00:20:36,280 to the world the work that these women did as well, 357 00:20:36,520 --> 00:20:40,160 the, the women in that that Martin talks about. 358 00:20:40,720 --> 00:20:43,720 I guess what I'm what's going with it is when I was 359 00:20:45,640 --> 00:20:48,640 around '06 or '07, when my mother died and I was 360 00:20:49,000 --> 00:20:54,000 we had a board meeting for SFA in Birmingham, and I brought my father 361 00:20:54,000 --> 00:20:57,000 because he was in mourning about my mother, 362 00:20:57,040 --> 00:20:59,760 and there was like a lag for some reason. 363 00:20:59,760 --> 00:21:02,760 So I took him to Gee's Bend and I took him to, 364 00:21:03,200 --> 00:21:06,280 the Rural Studio, and I took him to Selma. 365 00:21:07,280 --> 00:21:09,080 When we went to Gee's Bend. 366 00:21:09,080 --> 00:21:12,280 At that point, I can't think of the guy who gets, 367 00:21:12,800 --> 00:21:15,920 bad rap who was the first person, 368 00:21:15,920 --> 00:21:19,360 a white guy who was art historian, who first put them on the map. 369 00:21:20,080 --> 00:21:22,960 But it was only those 8 or 10 women. 370 00:21:22,960 --> 00:21:26,560 And when you get to Gee's Bend that somebody was coming to Gee's Bend. 371 00:21:27,120 --> 00:21:30,120 Women just started coming out of the tree tops, 372 00:21:30,880 --> 00:21:34,320 and all of them had 3 or 4 quilts they were working on, 373 00:21:35,200 --> 00:21:38,520 but none of them had the names of or they were the niece 374 00:21:38,520 --> 00:21:42,040 or the cousin or the goddaughter of these 8 or 10 women. 375 00:21:42,520 --> 00:21:45,520 But they wanted you to see that they were somebody too, 376 00:21:45,840 --> 00:21:48,080 and they had beautiful work. 377 00:21:48,080 --> 00:21:50,240 It was complicated because they were in competition 378 00:21:50,240 --> 00:21:54,880 with each other and competition for scraps, because the other women 379 00:21:54,880 --> 00:21:59,360 had gotten some level of acknowledgment. 380 00:22:00,160 --> 00:22:03,600 And it really showed me what you're saying. 381 00:22:03,600 --> 00:22:06,920 It was an embodiment of how much more work 382 00:22:06,920 --> 00:22:09,920 needs to be done, and how do you find these people? 383 00:22:10,720 --> 00:22:13,360 How do you acknowledge these people? 384 00:22:13,360 --> 00:22:15,040 Right, right, right. 385 00:22:16,400 --> 00:22:17,840 And you're 386 00:22:17,840 --> 00:22:21,520 one thing I just want to the is that you? 387 00:22:22,440 --> 00:22:24,600 One of the things I'm appreciative about your work 388 00:22:24,600 --> 00:22:27,920 is the the depth and the seriousness, 389 00:22:27,920 --> 00:22:31,840 because they ask a question about seriousness of the discipline. 390 00:22:31,840 --> 00:22:34,000 And I think you bring that to it. 391 00:22:34,000 --> 00:22:38,320 I think that's also why several people ask to have you be interviewed, 392 00:22:38,680 --> 00:22:41,680 because you're asking us to problematize 393 00:22:41,680 --> 00:22:44,680 something besides Sunday dinner. 394 00:22:46,360 --> 00:22:47,960 Yeah, because Sunday dinner 395 00:22:47,960 --> 00:22:50,960 carried with it a lot of 396 00:22:51,080 --> 00:22:52,680 other things. 397 00:22:52,680 --> 00:22:55,680 You know, you know, 398 00:22:57,960 --> 00:23:00,040 Sunday dinner wasn't just about eating. 399 00:23:00,040 --> 00:23:04,280 You know, I do this, this read in, in Building Houses 400 00:23:04,280 --> 00:23:07,280 about a Sunday dinner that takes place. 401 00:23:09,160 --> 00:23:11,320 And, you know, I start at the point 402 00:23:11,320 --> 00:23:14,320 in that conversation about just the 403 00:23:14,400 --> 00:23:17,040 where's the money coming from for the dinner, you know, 404 00:23:18,040 --> 00:23:20,560 and then 405 00:23:20,560 --> 00:23:22,920 what is the grocery list look like? 406 00:23:22,920 --> 00:23:25,920 Where do you have to shop? 407 00:23:26,080 --> 00:23:28,520 And then what are you what are you buying? 408 00:23:28,520 --> 00:23:31,560 And then how does it get into the house when you get. 409 00:23:31,880 --> 00:23:35,400 And the reason I do that is because I want people 410 00:23:35,400 --> 00:23:39,280 to be clear about the unrecognized labor of food preparation. 411 00:23:41,320 --> 00:23:42,160 Right. 412 00:23:42,160 --> 00:23:45,000 I mean, long before 413 00:23:45,000 --> 00:23:48,080 the food actually gets to the table, you know, 414 00:23:48,080 --> 00:23:51,480 we talk about farm to table way before that. 415 00:23:51,960 --> 00:23:56,000 There are all of these decisions that go into that process. 416 00:23:56,000 --> 00:24:01,360 And when you invisiblize that you, you really do overlook 417 00:24:01,880 --> 00:24:04,880 the emotional, physical, 418 00:24:06,080 --> 00:24:12,360 and psychological in some cases labor 419 00:24:13,480 --> 00:24:16,640 often and primarily of, of women 420 00:24:16,680 --> 00:24:20,000 that goes into helping to make it 421 00:24:20,520 --> 00:24:23,520 what one would define as Sunday dinner. 422 00:24:23,800 --> 00:24:24,640 So true. 423 00:24:26,680 --> 00:24:28,200 I taught a class on, 424 00:24:28,200 --> 00:24:32,440 across the diaspora in the continent about black women's work, 425 00:24:32,560 --> 00:24:36,400 a little bit of sex work, but mostly food work and market 426 00:24:36,400 --> 00:24:41,720 work and, market squares and trying to make it 427 00:24:41,720 --> 00:24:45,160 so that we read always across the diaspora and every week. 428 00:24:45,840 --> 00:24:48,760 And I ask the question, similar or not 429 00:24:48,760 --> 00:24:51,920 as, impactful as what you just described. 430 00:24:52,720 --> 00:24:55,480 And several of the students said that they were beginning 431 00:24:55,480 --> 00:24:58,480 to learn how to organize a meal on their own, 432 00:24:58,720 --> 00:25:01,880 but they went home and expected to be catered to, 433 00:25:02,680 --> 00:25:05,680 and that this made them have to realize labor 434 00:25:06,200 --> 00:25:11,280 that was being put out by mothers, sisters, grandmothers on their behalf, 435 00:25:11,440 --> 00:25:15,960 mostly the boy children, and that they were sheepish 436 00:25:15,960 --> 00:25:19,440 that you could see they were embarrassed because they suddenly saw the labor. 437 00:25:22,240 --> 00:25:23,960 That labor is no joke. 438 00:25:23,960 --> 00:25:27,800 I mean, you know, Marj DeVault writes about this, right? 439 00:25:27,800 --> 00:25:32,240 And and and so I look at that kind of work 440 00:25:32,400 --> 00:25:35,320 in relation to, for example, 441 00:25:35,320 --> 00:25:37,600 the entrepreneurial contributions 442 00:25:37,600 --> 00:25:41,920 of Black women who owned boarding houses, right? 443 00:25:41,920 --> 00:25:46,800 Or ran boarding houses, or lodging houses. And, 444 00:25:47,800 --> 00:25:51,560 you know, that kind of work animates me and excites me. 445 00:25:52,920 --> 00:25:55,920 I did a piece for the color conventions, 446 00:25:56,200 --> 00:26:00,680 which is a phenomenal project. 447 00:26:00,920 --> 00:26:03,920 It is. You know, captures the color 448 00:26:04,120 --> 00:26:07,120 convention movements where black folks came together and 449 00:26:08,200 --> 00:26:10,160 talked about the issues of the day. 450 00:26:10,160 --> 00:26:13,960 And so many years ago, when the symposium 451 00:26:13,960 --> 00:26:16,960 first took place for the color conventions, 452 00:26:17,760 --> 00:26:21,400 before the symposium took place, I wrote the convener, 453 00:26:21,880 --> 00:26:26,600 you know, P. Gabrielle Forman, and I said, you know, Gabrielle 454 00:26:27,520 --> 00:26:32,720 would you be interested in it because her part of the advertisement for it 455 00:26:32,720 --> 00:26:36,440 said, you know, women did not participate in the conventions. 456 00:26:36,440 --> 00:26:38,880 They weren't allowed to speak on the convention floor. 457 00:26:38,880 --> 00:26:40,440 Black women weren't allowed to speak. 458 00:26:42,080 --> 00:26:42,600 So I said, 459 00:26:42,600 --> 00:26:45,600 well, would you be interested in a paper on food? 460 00:26:46,480 --> 00:26:47,560 Right. 461 00:26:47,560 --> 00:26:50,400 And, she said, okay, say more. 462 00:26:50,400 --> 00:26:51,880 And so I was like, well, where do people eat 463 00:26:51,880 --> 00:26:54,600 and where did they stay when they came to the convention? 464 00:26:54,600 --> 00:26:57,400 And how did black women use 465 00:26:57,400 --> 00:27:00,440 commensality and food cultures 466 00:27:00,840 --> 00:27:05,040 to get their, politics on to the floor? 467 00:27:05,400 --> 00:27:05,800 Yeah. 468 00:27:05,800 --> 00:27:10,840 They put that word into the ear of the men who were allowed to speak, 469 00:27:10,840 --> 00:27:13,720 and they conjure favors, and they did all this. 470 00:27:13,720 --> 00:27:14,400 Right. 471 00:27:14,400 --> 00:27:17,920 And so, I mean, this is so when I joined ASFS, 472 00:27:18,560 --> 00:27:22,920 you know, that was the kind of work I was really interested in. 473 00:27:23,240 --> 00:27:26,840 And there was a lot more talk around 474 00:27:28,960 --> 00:27:30,120 agriculture. 475 00:27:30,120 --> 00:27:33,120 Because of course, we meet with the Ag and Human Values. 476 00:27:33,440 --> 00:27:36,880 I talk about that kind of work, 477 00:27:37,400 --> 00:27:41,240 hospitality, because those are some of the folks who were involved. 478 00:27:41,240 --> 00:27:45,320 And so I wanted to really have these really deep 479 00:27:46,240 --> 00:27:50,480 conversations around gender and race. 480 00:27:50,480 --> 00:27:54,720 And I was able to do that with, you know, Carole Counihan, 481 00:27:54,720 --> 00:28:00,040 Penny Van Esterik, you know, Alice Julier to some extent Amy Bentley. 482 00:28:00,040 --> 00:28:02,720 I mean, you know, we were able to have those conversations, 483 00:28:02,720 --> 00:28:05,960 but when it became an issue of talking about race, 484 00:28:07,840 --> 00:28:08,800 you know, 485 00:28:08,800 --> 00:28:12,480 that's when ASFS was was really falling short. 486 00:28:12,480 --> 00:28:15,360 So I remember our meeting very, very importantly. 487 00:28:15,360 --> 00:28:17,560 I remember this 488 00:28:17,560 --> 00:28:22,840 when we met in Boston in 2006 in June. 489 00:28:24,160 --> 00:28:29,640 And I remember that, 490 00:28:30,800 --> 00:28:35,320 we had there was a session 491 00:28:36,320 --> 00:28:39,280 and it was Arlene 492 00:28:39,280 --> 00:28:42,560 Avakian's Through the Kitchen Window had just come out 493 00:28:44,320 --> 00:28:47,320 standing room only right in the room. 494 00:28:47,800 --> 00:28:51,280 And, you know, the book 495 00:28:52,480 --> 00:28:54,720 is about ethnicity, 496 00:28:54,720 --> 00:28:57,720 not so much race, but about ethnicity. 497 00:28:58,000 --> 00:29:01,280 And because the two are not the same, but, you know, back then 498 00:29:01,280 --> 00:29:04,320 and folks would often use the, 499 00:29:04,880 --> 00:29:07,600 the terms interchangeably. 500 00:29:07,600 --> 00:29:12,840 And so we were, 501 00:29:12,840 --> 00:29:16,640 We would talk, you know, we were in this session and I, 502 00:29:16,640 --> 00:29:21,280 I was trying to find the, the, the book because I wanted to be sure that. 503 00:29:21,280 --> 00:29:23,480 Yeah. Okay. Through the Kitchen Window. 504 00:29:23,480 --> 00:29:25,520 And so it was a great conversation. 505 00:29:25,520 --> 00:29:28,560 But then I brought up an issue about race. 506 00:29:28,560 --> 00:29:30,040 Right. 507 00:29:30,040 --> 00:29:34,920 Because the subtitle is Women Explore the Intimate Meanings of Food and Cookery. 508 00:29:34,920 --> 00:29:37,080 But there are no Black. 509 00:29:37,080 --> 00:29:39,720 I don't think there's any Black women's writings in there. 510 00:29:39,720 --> 00:29:41,320 They might be one. 511 00:29:41,320 --> 00:29:44,560 It's which is a reprint, if that's the case. 512 00:29:45,400 --> 00:29:49,680 And so we we got into this conversation, 513 00:29:50,400 --> 00:29:53,960 and I remember one of the panelists sit. 514 00:29:55,480 --> 00:29:58,360 Can we get back to the food? 515 00:29:58,360 --> 00:30:00,040 And I was like, 516 00:30:00,040 --> 00:30:03,120 interesting that you don't see that 517 00:30:03,120 --> 00:30:06,120 we are having a food conversation, 518 00:30:06,160 --> 00:30:10,000 but that race is an integral part of that conversation. 519 00:30:10,000 --> 00:30:13,840 But because it wasn't wholly situated 520 00:30:13,840 --> 00:30:16,840 and focused around 521 00:30:17,680 --> 00:30:21,120 how many cups of flour and, you know, it was therefore 522 00:30:21,120 --> 00:30:25,440 an irrelevant conversation. 523 00:30:25,440 --> 00:30:29,360 And that was my consistent 524 00:30:29,920 --> 00:30:32,920 sort of encounter, 525 00:30:33,160 --> 00:30:37,080 unfortunately, with, with, 526 00:30:37,080 --> 00:30:41,200 with a ASFS early on. 527 00:30:43,360 --> 00:30:44,840 And that happened. 528 00:30:44,840 --> 00:30:45,280 Yeah. 529 00:30:45,280 --> 00:30:48,160 That happened all the time. 530 00:30:48,160 --> 00:30:49,480 It happened all the time. 531 00:30:49,480 --> 00:30:53,440 So so yeah, that made that made 532 00:30:54,000 --> 00:30:56,680 that made ASFS 533 00:30:56,680 --> 00:31:01,120 ASFS a very isolating experience. 534 00:31:02,400 --> 00:31:04,560 Because, you know, 535 00:31:04,560 --> 00:31:08,680 you can only have these conversations for so long 536 00:31:08,680 --> 00:31:11,840 before you realize you're not having 537 00:31:13,480 --> 00:31:14,680 a symbiotic one. 538 00:31:18,560 --> 00:31:20,080 So I after 539 00:31:20,080 --> 00:31:23,480 that, I probably, you know, I stayed on for a while. 540 00:31:23,480 --> 00:31:26,520 I became vice president, and I stayed on for a while, 541 00:31:26,960 --> 00:31:31,440 but then, you know, my, my career just went in a different trajectory. 542 00:31:31,440 --> 00:31:33,800 And so I just sort of followed through with it. 543 00:31:33,800 --> 00:31:36,960 And, and I'm only recently 544 00:31:36,960 --> 00:31:41,560 starting to come back because, in part, there are younger scholars 545 00:31:41,560 --> 00:31:46,920 coming into the field, who are picking up these food conversations. 546 00:31:46,920 --> 00:31:50,920 So are people who I can be in conversation with, you know. 547 00:31:51,280 --> 00:31:52,600 Totally. 548 00:31:52,600 --> 00:31:54,640 Totally. Very interesting what you're saying. 549 00:31:54,640 --> 00:31:55,680 Quick aside. 550 00:31:55,680 --> 00:31:56,080 Yeah. 551 00:31:56,080 --> 00:31:59,160 And part of what I'm working on was really listening to, 552 00:31:59,760 --> 00:32:02,760 something I play in class sometimes where, 553 00:32:04,000 --> 00:32:06,400 the kind of, 554 00:32:06,400 --> 00:32:10,800 predator newscaster Charlie Rose is interviewing Toni Morrison 555 00:32:11,080 --> 00:32:15,480 and asking her about a question that Bill Moyers asked her about 556 00:32:15,480 --> 00:32:16,360 could she write 557 00:32:17,440 --> 00:32:18,640 white people in her 558 00:32:18,640 --> 00:32:23,920 in her books and, you know, she gives a very beautiful answer. 559 00:32:24,320 --> 00:32:27,320 But at one point in the kind of the crux is 560 00:32:27,520 --> 00:32:30,520 she says that, you know, I remember a critique of Sula 561 00:32:31,080 --> 00:32:36,120 that when was I going to get off my high horse and write about the real issues, 562 00:32:36,560 --> 00:32:39,360 which is the relationship between black and white people, 563 00:32:39,360 --> 00:32:42,360 and get off this thing about writing, about black people and black people. 564 00:32:43,880 --> 00:32:45,640 As if that's not a real issue. 565 00:32:45,640 --> 00:32:47,080 And we're not real people. 566 00:32:47,080 --> 00:32:48,280 That's right, that's right. 567 00:32:48,280 --> 00:32:52,240 I think it's the same story that you're saying in relationship to food. 568 00:32:52,840 --> 00:32:56,440 Because if you don't see me, if I'm invisible in plain sight, 569 00:32:56,960 --> 00:32:59,640 then you don't, I don't matter and I'm still 3/5. 570 00:33:01,640 --> 00:33:04,600 And this is or not at all. Or not at all. 571 00:33:04,600 --> 00:33:07,760 And you know, and without getting too deep in it, but when 572 00:33:08,800 --> 00:33:12,400 I asked the year that, Monica White and Ashanté Reese 573 00:33:12,400 --> 00:33:16,800 won the book awards, and I asked what were they 574 00:33:16,800 --> 00:33:16,960 gonna 575 00:33:16,960 --> 00:33:19,960 It was the it was it was five years ago, I think. 576 00:33:20,120 --> 00:33:23,000 And I said, well, what do you all do about race in? 577 00:33:23,000 --> 00:33:24,640 You know, I've been in this organization for a while. 578 00:33:24,640 --> 00:33:26,120 I'm on the board now. 579 00:33:26,120 --> 00:33:28,720 And they said, well, we've never dealt with it 580 00:33:28,720 --> 00:33:31,720 because we didn't want to, you know, kind of 581 00:33:31,800 --> 00:33:32,800 right. 582 00:33:32,800 --> 00:33:35,760 And I was like, well, but how can you not deal with it, 583 00:33:35,760 --> 00:33:36,440 you know. 584 00:33:36,440 --> 00:33:40,360 And so that brought out these two women get these awards and then it brings out 585 00:33:40,720 --> 00:33:43,560 this, I don't like the word, but BIPOC fellowship, 586 00:33:44,560 --> 00:33:47,960 and the thing that I can speak to that I'm glad for 587 00:33:48,320 --> 00:33:51,840 is that I Were you in Syracuse last year? 588 00:33:52,480 --> 00:33:54,240 No, I wasn't in Syracuse. 589 00:33:54,240 --> 00:33:58,000 They have they now have this, what they call BIPOC luncheon. 590 00:33:58,520 --> 00:34:01,520 There's at least 60 people of color, 591 00:34:01,520 --> 00:34:04,080 young scholars, 592 00:34:04,080 --> 00:34:07,800 diverse, in addition to the 12 scholars who get the fellowship. 593 00:34:08,240 --> 00:34:14,080 So, I was like, okay, this is making more sense to me. 594 00:34:14,080 --> 00:34:14,760 Now, you get. 595 00:34:14,760 --> 00:34:17,920 And I was just on a panel at LASA 596 00:34:19,240 --> 00:34:22,000 That had to do with, food 597 00:34:22,000 --> 00:34:26,680 and race and gender and the panels were 598 00:34:26,680 --> 00:34:29,680 I was virtual because of my thing, but the other people were real. 599 00:34:29,680 --> 00:34:32,120 And so I was coming in hybrid. 600 00:34:32,120 --> 00:34:35,640 The two other, one woman I know who is a senior scholar in anthro, 601 00:34:36,280 --> 00:34:40,040 the other two women are younger and they had good work. 602 00:34:40,040 --> 00:34:42,760 Don't get me wrong, I don't know them. I don't want to badmouth them. 603 00:34:42,760 --> 00:34:48,760 But there was a liberal white ethos championing the downtrodden. 604 00:34:50,720 --> 00:34:53,720 That, you know, I was glad that they wanted to take it up. 605 00:34:53,720 --> 00:34:55,440 But I'm also like, yeah, 606 00:34:55,440 --> 00:34:58,800 there's a thing that Jessica says about she wants us to do our work 607 00:34:58,800 --> 00:35:01,920 to and it's different when we do our own work. 608 00:35:02,400 --> 00:35:03,400 Absolutely it is. 609 00:35:03,400 --> 00:35:05,720 I mean, that goes back to the Morrison quote, right? 610 00:35:05,720 --> 00:35:06,640 Yeah. 611 00:35:06,640 --> 00:35:11,680 About why do we have to situate conversations 612 00:35:12,480 --> 00:35:15,000 with white people to be legitimate? 613 00:35:15,000 --> 00:35:16,000 Yeah. 614 00:35:16,000 --> 00:35:20,680 I mean, the whole reason that, first of all, let me just be clear about 615 00:35:20,880 --> 00:35:30,160 I don't think my work has ever been recognized by ASFS and it's fine, 616 00:35:32,320 --> 00:35:34,360 but in terms of 617 00:35:34,360 --> 00:35:36,400 the academy, 618 00:35:36,400 --> 00:35:39,560 my work is different from Jessica's because, you know, 619 00:35:39,560 --> 00:35:45,600 she started out primarily, you know, creating these fantastic 620 00:35:45,600 --> 00:35:49,360 works of art that speak to, 621 00:35:50,800 --> 00:35:52,680 cook cookery and cooking. 622 00:35:52,680 --> 00:35:54,600 Yeah, right. 623 00:35:54,600 --> 00:35:59,320 And that's what she's noted for in her work at the Ebony Test Kitchen. 624 00:35:59,320 --> 00:36:05,400 And, my work is more, in carving out 625 00:36:05,400 --> 00:36:09,000 the subfield of Black feminist food studies. 626 00:36:09,720 --> 00:36:12,320 Yeah. 627 00:36:12,320 --> 00:36:15,120 And, you know, 628 00:36:15,120 --> 00:36:16,440 I mean, I'm thankful for that. 629 00:36:16,440 --> 00:36:18,920 I didn't know that. That's what I was doing at the time. 630 00:36:18,920 --> 00:36:24,200 I was just wanting to write about Black people in food in a way 631 00:36:24,200 --> 00:36:27,840 that I knew reflected my lived experience 632 00:36:27,840 --> 00:36:30,840 and that of so many others. 633 00:36:31,280 --> 00:36:33,400 In my family, in my 634 00:36:33,400 --> 00:36:36,960 in my circles, in my walk of life. 635 00:36:37,520 --> 00:36:39,960 Right? Telling real stories. 636 00:36:39,960 --> 00:36:44,000 Part of the reason that I wrote Building Houses the way that I did 637 00:36:44,800 --> 00:36:47,800 is because, Doris Witt, 638 00:36:48,360 --> 00:36:51,080 who wrote the book Black Hunger. 639 00:36:51,080 --> 00:36:54,400 Her book came out just shortly after that first, 640 00:36:55,600 --> 00:37:00,240 Southern Foodways Symposium. 641 00:37:00,640 --> 00:37:03,920 And I remember lots of us were really excited. 642 00:37:04,360 --> 00:37:05,520 Right? 643 00:37:05,520 --> 00:37:07,840 Again, Toni was there. 644 00:37:07,840 --> 00:37:11,400 Donna Gabaccia 645 00:37:11,720 --> 00:37:16,040 and Donna, Black journalist out of Oh 646 00:37:16,040 --> 00:37:17,720 I know what you mean. Yeah. 647 00:37:17,720 --> 00:37:18,400 I see her face. 648 00:37:18,400 --> 00:37:21,400 I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, 649 00:37:21,640 --> 00:37:24,640 and a couple of us were there and we were all talking about. 650 00:37:24,640 --> 00:37:27,360 We can't wait till this book comes out, you know? 651 00:37:27,360 --> 00:37:30,360 And it came out, and it was an exciting book. 652 00:37:30,600 --> 00:37:34,040 And, Charla Draper, 653 00:37:34,040 --> 00:37:37,440 all of us were there, and, 654 00:37:39,480 --> 00:37:41,920 And then I remember Carole Counihan 655 00:37:41,920 --> 00:37:44,920 wrote a review of the book, 656 00:37:45,280 --> 00:37:46,960 and, you know, Carole's an anthropologist. 657 00:37:46,960 --> 00:37:49,960 So she said, 658 00:37:51,760 --> 00:37:54,840 where were the where were the voices of 659 00:37:56,320 --> 00:37:59,320 of the Black women? 660 00:37:59,360 --> 00:38:03,720 And I remember reading that review and I said, you know what? 661 00:38:03,720 --> 00:38:06,360 That's a really, really good question. 662 00:38:06,360 --> 00:38:09,920 You know, and when Donna Battle Pierce that's who I was talking about. 663 00:38:09,960 --> 00:38:12,760 Donna. Yeah, we were talking about 664 00:38:14,480 --> 00:38:15,320 the book we were 665 00:38:15,320 --> 00:38:18,320 and how excited we were for it. 666 00:38:19,240 --> 00:38:23,080 We didn't anticipate that it would really be more of a literary criticism. 667 00:38:23,080 --> 00:38:25,440 Right. It's not so involved in. 668 00:38:25,440 --> 00:38:28,600 But when I read that concern of Carol's, 669 00:38:28,600 --> 00:38:31,600 I was like, right, the I want to hear from Black women. 670 00:38:32,520 --> 00:38:35,680 Our earlier conversation off the mic, when we were talking 671 00:38:35,680 --> 00:38:39,440 about doing this work, it was really important to me that I went 672 00:38:39,440 --> 00:38:43,440 into Black churches because that was my stomping grounds. 673 00:38:43,440 --> 00:38:46,360 That was the place that I was most familiar with. 674 00:38:46,360 --> 00:38:49,360 It was important that I capture it, and I'm glad that I did. 675 00:38:49,360 --> 00:38:52,360 The memories of my, 676 00:38:52,480 --> 00:38:54,520 my, cousin 677 00:38:54,520 --> 00:38:58,400 who I talked about this in a couple of instances in my work with, 678 00:38:59,080 --> 00:39:01,520 come out of her house and 679 00:39:01,520 --> 00:39:04,600 go right next door into the field with the brown paper bag, 680 00:39:04,600 --> 00:39:08,440 and come back about 45 minutes later with a bag of crease salad. 681 00:39:08,920 --> 00:39:12,560 You know, and and then would you know, I'd go over 682 00:39:12,920 --> 00:39:16,120 once I saw her go back in the house and she'd be in there 683 00:39:16,120 --> 00:39:19,400 washing the creases and washing the creases and washing the creases. 684 00:39:19,520 --> 00:39:20,080 And what 685 00:39:20,080 --> 00:39:23,000 You know, because creases grow low to the ground, right. 686 00:39:24,240 --> 00:39:25,960 And so they could be dirty and 687 00:39:25,960 --> 00:39:29,880 and they would be dirty because she just picked them out or pokeweed 688 00:39:29,920 --> 00:39:31,240 Right? Right. 689 00:39:31,240 --> 00:39:32,440 Poke salad. Right. 690 00:39:32,440 --> 00:39:33,040 Yeah. 691 00:39:33,040 --> 00:39:34,240 Like you gotta be careful 692 00:39:34,240 --> 00:39:37,240 how you cook it because you need to kill somebody with the 693 00:39:37,800 --> 00:39:39,920 I mean, so it's so much of 694 00:39:39,920 --> 00:39:43,000 my work is grounded in home for me. 695 00:39:43,120 --> 00:39:46,320 You know, the lives of of of black people 696 00:39:48,000 --> 00:39:49,720 who are my people. 697 00:39:49,720 --> 00:39:54,240 You know, my great grandmother whose wig was always askew 698 00:39:54,240 --> 00:39:57,400 and whose pipe was, you know, never lit you know, 699 00:39:57,400 --> 00:40:01,040 but would tell us we got to go out and feed the hogs and whatnot. 700 00:40:01,320 --> 00:40:04,360 So that's my lived experience. 701 00:40:04,360 --> 00:40:07,360 So when people say to me, let's get back to the food 702 00:40:07,760 --> 00:40:12,000 and leave out the race, I'm like then you're leaving out my voice. 703 00:40:12,400 --> 00:40:17,680 I refused to do any kind of work, for myself if no one else, 704 00:40:17,680 --> 00:40:21,600 because I wrote Building Houses for the black women like my mom and others 705 00:40:22,000 --> 00:40:24,320 who would not have that voice in the kitchen 706 00:40:24,320 --> 00:40:27,320 because that's not their thing, they do something else. 707 00:40:27,600 --> 00:40:29,960 So, I had to include those voices. 708 00:40:29,960 --> 00:40:31,360 So, when you tell me, 709 00:40:31,360 --> 00:40:34,360 you know, let's just talk about the measurements in the cups, okay? 710 00:40:34,520 --> 00:40:35,560 There's a place for that. 711 00:40:35,560 --> 00:40:39,440 But there's also very much a place for the work that I'm doing in the work 712 00:40:39,440 --> 00:40:42,440 that I'm talking about that does not require a measurement. 713 00:40:42,560 --> 00:40:45,560 But like Vertamae said it requires vibration. 714 00:40:47,520 --> 00:40:50,680 So, you're on it. 715 00:40:51,040 --> 00:40:53,960 This is this is a, 716 00:40:53,960 --> 00:40:55,240 the foundation. 717 00:40:55,240 --> 00:41:00,200 So we've gone, we've gone pretty far in this to what they'd like. 718 00:41:00,480 --> 00:41:03,560 So, given what we've just gone through 719 00:41:05,160 --> 00:41:09,520 and where we're sitting now as it is, 720 00:41:10,320 --> 00:41:13,320 the fifth anniversary of George Floyd being killed 721 00:41:13,720 --> 00:41:16,720 and the decimation of DEI 722 00:41:16,800 --> 00:41:20,640 that brought more people into some of these spaces 723 00:41:21,520 --> 00:41:25,400 and some of the programs, the Mellon grant, we got as an organization, etc.. 724 00:41:27,080 --> 00:41:29,640 How do you see this century 725 00:41:29,640 --> 00:41:33,680 we're in with all of the crap of the current president? 726 00:41:34,280 --> 00:41:36,800 Yeah. 727 00:41:36,800 --> 00:41:40,000 In relationship to food studies, to the field, to the 728 00:41:41,120 --> 00:41:46,480 what people can take up, what institutions will support the structural issues 729 00:41:46,480 --> 00:41:51,160 are that are going to be the rut in the road, are the opportunities. 730 00:41:52,360 --> 00:41:52,720 Yeah. 731 00:41:52,720 --> 00:41:56,920 You know, I was having this conversation with one of the board members of 732 00:41:58,160 --> 00:42:01,840 ASFS, it's been 20 years and I'm like 733 00:42:03,120 --> 00:42:06,120 you know. 734 00:42:07,480 --> 00:42:08,440 The subfield 735 00:42:08,440 --> 00:42:12,640 of Black food studies or food studies of the African diaspora 736 00:42:12,640 --> 00:42:17,040 is it's here you've got scholars doing this work. 737 00:42:17,520 --> 00:42:19,840 It is incumbent upon ASFS 738 00:42:19,840 --> 00:42:22,840 if they're going to grow 739 00:42:24,200 --> 00:42:28,880 in directions that are meaningful to a lot of people, 740 00:42:29,960 --> 00:42:33,360 to acknowledge that work is part of the subfield 741 00:42:33,480 --> 00:42:36,760 of this larger food studies arena. 742 00:42:38,840 --> 00:42:39,200 Excuse me. 743 00:42:39,200 --> 00:42:42,200 It's also important. 744 00:42:42,320 --> 00:42:43,640 And I've said this before 745 00:42:43,640 --> 00:42:46,640 because back 20 years ago, 746 00:42:46,760 --> 00:42:51,240 go back 30, maybe when the Chronicle did that crazy article that said, there's 747 00:42:51,240 --> 00:42:55,720 something called food studies studies, but it's scholarship lite you know. 748 00:42:57,320 --> 00:42:59,920 And people kind of came out and were kinda like 749 00:42:59,920 --> 00:43:01,760 And just started doing all this work. 750 00:43:02,880 --> 00:43:06,280 It wasn't because we were necessarily responding 751 00:43:06,280 --> 00:43:10,200 to the Chronicle it was because we were more people were doing the work. 752 00:43:10,200 --> 00:43:13,200 And now you have a lot more people doing the work. 753 00:43:16,080 --> 00:43:18,160 But is it 754 00:43:18,160 --> 00:43:21,320 but the work that it's just like food 755 00:43:21,440 --> 00:43:24,440 in general when we when we talk, 756 00:43:25,160 --> 00:43:28,160 everyone thinks, I can write about food because everyone eats 757 00:43:28,160 --> 00:43:29,400 and so there's nothing to it. 758 00:43:29,400 --> 00:43:31,120 Let me just throw a few biscuits 759 00:43:31,120 --> 00:43:34,600 and some peas in this study, and I've got a food studies project. 760 00:43:35,480 --> 00:43:39,480 And that's not true any more than just because you 761 00:43:39,480 --> 00:43:43,520 look at something that was written 20 years ago, you're not a historian, 762 00:43:44,040 --> 00:43:48,360 you know, you're looking maybe you're looking back, 763 00:43:48,360 --> 00:43:51,520 but it doesn't necessarily make you a historian. 764 00:43:51,920 --> 00:43:57,760 So I have always felt that we have to carve out some space, and claim some ground 765 00:43:59,160 --> 00:44:00,480 with ASFS and 766 00:44:00,480 --> 00:44:03,480 say, this is how you do food study. 767 00:44:03,480 --> 00:44:05,680 There are lots of different ways you can do it, 768 00:44:05,680 --> 00:44:07,360 but there are some principles. 769 00:44:07,360 --> 00:44:11,040 There's some guiding lights that you want to look to. 770 00:44:11,040 --> 00:44:14,880 There's some road maps that you want to establish 771 00:44:14,880 --> 00:44:18,680 because otherwise you are dismissing the very hard 772 00:44:18,680 --> 00:44:21,680 work of the people in this field who helped to set 773 00:44:22,000 --> 00:44:25,000 the foundations of the work that's been done. 774 00:44:25,560 --> 00:44:28,240 Any young person, 775 00:44:28,240 --> 00:44:30,200 young in the sense that you know, 776 00:44:30,200 --> 00:44:34,000 they are younger than me a graduate student. 777 00:44:34,520 --> 00:44:37,600 And they are doing this, this dissertation project. 778 00:44:37,600 --> 00:44:41,560 And I wrote comments and I said, you know, 779 00:44:43,280 --> 00:44:47,400 you can't just willy nilly or you can, but I don't think it's good scholarship 780 00:44:47,400 --> 00:44:51,840 to just willy nilly write about various racial and ethnic groups in wide 781 00:44:51,840 --> 00:44:57,240 swaths without, you know, really thinking through who you're talking about. 782 00:44:58,200 --> 00:44:59,160 You know what 783 00:44:59,160 --> 00:45:02,160 What is Latino? What is that? 784 00:45:02,440 --> 00:45:04,680 You talking about 785 00:45:04,680 --> 00:45:06,520 You know Mexicans, Filipinos. 786 00:45:06,520 --> 00:45:07,520 Who are you talking about 787 00:45:07,520 --> 00:45:10,520 there or you know indigenous 788 00:45:11,040 --> 00:45:12,680 and they really kind of get offended. 789 00:45:12,680 --> 00:45:16,800 And I said any more than you can just talk about African Americans. 790 00:45:16,800 --> 00:45:18,480 I said you do know that their food 791 00:45:18,480 --> 00:45:22,360 practices that are very different in Louisiana than those 792 00:45:22,600 --> 00:45:23,920 that are in South Carolina, 793 00:45:23,920 --> 00:45:27,480 than those that, Ringland, than those that are in the Midwest, 794 00:45:28,080 --> 00:45:33,040 from those that are in, you know, the Washington, DC area or the Chesapeake. 795 00:45:33,800 --> 00:45:36,440 And they just sort of, you know, looked at me 796 00:45:36,440 --> 00:45:39,800 and I said, and therein lies part of the challenge thing. 797 00:45:40,640 --> 00:45:42,800 Every discipline has standards. 798 00:45:42,800 --> 00:45:45,800 And I don't know that we, as 799 00:45:46,840 --> 00:45:49,880 scholars of food, have laid out 800 00:45:49,880 --> 00:45:52,880 what those standards are or should be. 801 00:45:53,320 --> 00:45:56,200 I'm not talking about canons, I'm talking about 802 00:45:56,200 --> 00:45:59,720 offering people parameters around. 803 00:46:00,040 --> 00:46:02,480 This is what makes for good food scholarship. 804 00:46:04,000 --> 00:46:04,360 You know, 805 00:46:04,360 --> 00:46:07,600 whether you're anthropologist, historian, literary scholar. 806 00:46:07,600 --> 00:46:11,320 So, these are I mean, there are myriad ways you could approach it, but these are 807 00:46:11,320 --> 00:46:14,320 some things you might want to think about when you're doing that work. 808 00:46:15,560 --> 00:46:18,040 And the reason I say that, and I shared this with this, 809 00:46:18,040 --> 00:46:21,040 our colleague, is because 810 00:46:21,320 --> 00:46:25,040 without that, people do not understand often 811 00:46:25,240 --> 00:46:27,160 when their work gets rejected from 812 00:46:27,160 --> 00:46:31,680 Food, Culture, and Society, when it gets rejected from, you know, Food and Foodways 813 00:46:31,680 --> 00:46:35,400 and possibly Gastronomica because it does not meet 814 00:46:35,400 --> 00:46:38,400 a particular standard or rigor 815 00:46:38,400 --> 00:46:41,400 or it does not center the actual food, 816 00:46:42,160 --> 00:46:45,160 but you are submitting to a food journal. 817 00:46:46,520 --> 00:46:49,080 So, I've always felt like that's something that ASFS 818 00:46:49,080 --> 00:46:52,080 wants to be, 819 00:46:52,360 --> 00:46:57,800 concerned about and then also recognizing that there are a number of 820 00:46:59,000 --> 00:46:59,760 Black women 821 00:46:59,760 --> 00:47:03,720 in particular, who help to establish what we know 822 00:47:03,720 --> 00:47:07,960 to be this, again, this subfield of Black food studies, 823 00:47:08,680 --> 00:47:13,080 broadly defined, because I cannot tell you how many works I have read 824 00:47:13,800 --> 00:47:16,800 that are not authored by Black women. 825 00:47:19,000 --> 00:47:21,280 That act 826 00:47:21,280 --> 00:47:25,480 as if our work doesn't exist and start somewhere in the middle, 827 00:47:26,160 --> 00:47:29,560 and then just start talking and just start going on, 828 00:47:29,560 --> 00:47:32,560 you know, about as if we did not, 829 00:47:33,880 --> 00:47:36,520 do quite a bit of work to help establish 830 00:47:36,520 --> 00:47:40,440 and make way for the work that is currently being done today. 831 00:47:42,160 --> 00:47:43,560 This is very important, 832 00:47:43,560 --> 00:47:46,640 what you're saying now on so many levels 833 00:47:47,520 --> 00:47:50,680 and particularly, as you said, parameters, 834 00:47:50,680 --> 00:47:53,680 not canon or canonical. 835 00:47:55,720 --> 00:47:59,200 And I was with a colleague who has a good article 836 00:47:59,200 --> 00:48:01,600 they want to publish, and said I need to get some food stuff in it. 837 00:48:01,600 --> 00:48:06,440 And I know that they're caring, but I part of me kind of bristled 838 00:48:07,400 --> 00:48:10,480 at, you know, I was quiet, but it, it, it 839 00:48:11,560 --> 00:48:16,320 it speaks to something I've been thinking lately that sometimes I think 840 00:48:16,320 --> 00:48:19,520 that critical food studies in ASA takes up 841 00:48:20,000 --> 00:48:23,240 where ASFS, is not, is lacking. 842 00:48:23,760 --> 00:48:26,120 And that becomes a question. 843 00:48:26,120 --> 00:48:30,880 I think I said this to you before years ago when Carole was editor, 844 00:48:30,880 --> 00:48:35,960 she asked me to review something for consideration, and I guess it was 845 00:48:35,960 --> 00:48:38,960 Food and Foodways, which I guess I don't know which one she was doing. 846 00:48:39,760 --> 00:48:43,160 And it was basically it was an okay article, but it was it had using, 847 00:48:44,280 --> 00:48:47,800 food tropes in rap music to talk about race, 848 00:48:47,800 --> 00:48:49,000 and it was decent enough, 849 00:48:49,000 --> 00:48:52,480 and it was obviously somebody who was more trained ethnomusicology. 850 00:48:52,800 --> 00:48:55,920 But the point was that it was it was a Serbo-Croatian. 851 00:48:55,920 --> 00:48:56,320 To her. 852 00:48:57,280 --> 00:48:59,680 And I said to her like, yeah, there's some stuff to clean up. 853 00:48:59,680 --> 00:49:03,520 But the one of the strengths of this article is that students 854 00:49:03,520 --> 00:49:06,960 will understand the point of view, and the teacher may not. 855 00:49:07,440 --> 00:49:10,440 But that could make for a heavy discussion in the classroom, 856 00:49:10,480 --> 00:49:13,480 because they'll be familiar with the material. 857 00:49:13,520 --> 00:49:16,400 And this person, whoever the writer is, 858 00:49:16,400 --> 00:49:20,120 understands this, linkage 859 00:49:21,160 --> 00:49:24,600 in the music and the food and the commensal thing and that we're 860 00:49:24,600 --> 00:49:28,480 eating and drinking and laughing and somebody might be playing. 861 00:49:28,880 --> 00:49:32,800 So this is a continuity, and they're bringing that to the fore, 862 00:49:33,760 --> 00:49:34,920 but you can't see it. 863 00:49:34,920 --> 00:49:36,080 I didn't see it that way to her. 864 00:49:36,080 --> 00:49:39,320 But that doesn't mean it's not legitimate. 865 00:49:39,320 --> 00:49:40,360 And she was asking for help. 866 00:49:40,360 --> 00:49:42,680 So it was she was asking for. 867 00:49:42,680 --> 00:49:46,840 But unless and until people start to recognize that we're in trouble. 868 00:49:47,080 --> 00:49:48,040 Oh, absolutely. 869 00:49:48,040 --> 00:49:50,720 I agree with you 100%. I mean, I get asked to 870 00:49:52,280 --> 00:49:52,720 review 871 00:49:52,720 --> 00:49:57,280 these very interesting articles all the time, and and I'm excited by them 872 00:49:57,280 --> 00:50:00,280 because oftentimes they're not in the U.S. 873 00:50:00,640 --> 00:50:02,280 Yeah. 874 00:50:02,280 --> 00:50:03,960 And you know and I know you do too. 875 00:50:03,960 --> 00:50:05,320 And and so forth. 876 00:50:05,320 --> 00:50:10,720 And, and, you know, and so we're asked to lend a particular point of view, 877 00:50:11,360 --> 00:50:13,720 not because 878 00:50:13,720 --> 00:50:17,360 of our racial identification, but because this is the work that we study, 879 00:50:17,360 --> 00:50:20,360 as I just finished sharing with folks out in, 880 00:50:21,280 --> 00:50:23,280 in, in Davis over the weekend. 881 00:50:23,280 --> 00:50:26,280 I mean, I feel, I know Black 882 00:50:26,840 --> 00:50:30,160 food women in food studies because that's what I study. 883 00:50:30,160 --> 00:50:33,640 I spent 20 years doing this work, right? 884 00:50:33,640 --> 00:50:36,640 Not only because I, 885 00:50:36,680 --> 00:50:38,800 of my own lived experience. 886 00:50:38,800 --> 00:50:42,200 And so that has to be brought to bear. 887 00:50:42,760 --> 00:50:45,800 I'm not I'm going to say it has to count for something because it does already. 888 00:50:45,800 --> 00:50:48,240 That's always already the case. 889 00:50:48,240 --> 00:50:52,560 But it has to be brought to bear on these conversations that, that take place, 890 00:50:53,920 --> 00:50:55,520 in very substantive 891 00:50:55,520 --> 00:50:59,480 ways and not in, in, in these sort of perfunctory, 892 00:50:59,480 --> 00:51:02,720 oh, yeah, we need a Black person or, or something like that. 893 00:51:02,720 --> 00:51:05,800 And so we're going to go call out one of the folks that we know, 894 00:51:05,800 --> 00:51:08,800 know, you know, we 895 00:51:09,160 --> 00:51:11,320 we have very central roles 896 00:51:11,320 --> 00:51:16,440 in understanding, you know, these these multiple dynamics. 897 00:51:16,440 --> 00:51:20,560 I was being interviewed a couple of weeks ago by a local radio station 898 00:51:21,080 --> 00:51:25,920 here in the DMV around what I thought about the tariffs 899 00:51:25,920 --> 00:51:28,920 and their impact on immigrant folkways, and 900 00:51:30,720 --> 00:51:32,560 as it turns out, this semester, 901 00:51:32,560 --> 00:51:35,640 I co-taught a course that I created on, 902 00:51:35,680 --> 00:51:38,680 Maryland's Ethnic Foodways. 903 00:51:40,040 --> 00:51:41,360 And so midway through 904 00:51:41,360 --> 00:51:44,440 this conversation, this person says, well, 905 00:51:45,400 --> 00:51:48,680 you know, they kept harping on how do I think it's going to affect 906 00:51:48,680 --> 00:51:52,280 immigrants and I said, how is it going to affect all of us? 907 00:51:52,840 --> 00:51:56,320 You know, these these are foods that are 908 00:51:58,000 --> 00:52:01,520 maybe sold in specialty markets 909 00:52:01,520 --> 00:52:07,240 or immigrant owned supermarkets, but they affect all of us 910 00:52:07,240 --> 00:52:11,640 because American foodways is immigrant foodways. 911 00:52:12,560 --> 00:52:13,000 Right. 912 00:52:13,000 --> 00:52:16,000 And I could not believe that in the 21st 913 00:52:16,000 --> 00:52:19,000 century, I'm having to tell this reporter. 914 00:52:19,880 --> 00:52:20,800 I was like, what? 915 00:52:20,800 --> 00:52:22,240 What are you asking about? 916 00:52:22,240 --> 00:52:25,680 I was like, avocado can be eaten anywhere. 917 00:52:25,960 --> 00:52:26,320 Yeah. 918 00:52:26,320 --> 00:52:30,400 There are some specialty items, of course, but in the main, 919 00:52:31,680 --> 00:52:34,720 you know, whether it's smoked turkey or smoked fish or, 920 00:52:35,080 --> 00:52:38,080 you know, curries or other kinds of spices, 921 00:52:38,520 --> 00:52:42,840 some of which you can only get at these particular food markets. 922 00:52:42,840 --> 00:52:46,520 The bottom line is we all are going to pay the price for that. 923 00:52:46,520 --> 00:52:52,360 Totally. You know, it's not like you only can get, 924 00:52:52,760 --> 00:52:56,160 you know, palak paneer nowadays in one place. 925 00:52:56,160 --> 00:52:59,160 I mean, you can get these foods wherever. 926 00:52:59,200 --> 00:53:04,120 So, it was a little annoying to me that we still don't 927 00:53:04,120 --> 00:53:08,280 have a good understanding about the ways in which, 928 00:53:09,560 --> 00:53:11,800 you know, food unites food. 929 00:53:11,800 --> 00:53:15,400 Food divides, and food is representative of us all 930 00:53:15,400 --> 00:53:18,400 on so many different levels. 931 00:53:18,800 --> 00:53:19,200 Yeah. 932 00:53:19,200 --> 00:53:22,920 And, it's so, so true what you're saying. 933 00:53:22,920 --> 00:53:25,480 There's so much to unpack there. 934 00:53:25,480 --> 00:53:30,240 And it's, it's unfortunate, you know, side bar 935 00:53:30,240 --> 00:53:34,560 I was looking at, neuropsychological work 936 00:53:34,560 --> 00:53:36,960 on collective memory for part of this chapter 937 00:53:36,960 --> 00:53:39,960 I'm working on, and I looked, I go, oh, 938 00:53:40,840 --> 00:53:42,600 this is not at all my specialty. 939 00:53:42,600 --> 00:53:46,720 I can go to the subject librarian, but this stuff could go away. 940 00:53:47,360 --> 00:53:49,080 Because this is what they're saying 941 00:53:49,080 --> 00:53:50,920 we can't have access to. 942 00:53:50,920 --> 00:53:53,920 And it's in a similar way to what you're saying about food is that 943 00:53:54,640 --> 00:53:57,640 all of everything is up. 944 00:53:57,720 --> 00:54:00,600 And we have to be mindful that all of this stuff is up. 945 00:54:00,600 --> 00:54:01,080 Yeah. 946 00:54:01,080 --> 00:54:04,280 And we we have to be attentive to it. Yeah. 947 00:54:04,360 --> 00:54:07,320 So having said that, they're asking a question 948 00:54:07,320 --> 00:54:10,480 which I don't know how to frame is it's not a hard question. 949 00:54:10,480 --> 00:54:14,600 But as you identified, there are now 950 00:54:15,080 --> 00:54:17,720 I get exposed to at least eight, 951 00:54:18,760 --> 00:54:19,680 maybe more, 952 00:54:19,680 --> 00:54:22,600 different journals about food 953 00:54:22,600 --> 00:54:25,600 in varying degrees of caliber. 954 00:54:25,720 --> 00:54:28,720 But they have a question of do we need to consider 955 00:54:29,320 --> 00:54:34,240 other ways to express what you've just spoken about, about food 956 00:54:34,240 --> 00:54:37,360 and the parameters do we need 957 00:54:37,360 --> 00:54:41,760 to create journals or monographs or in some way create 958 00:54:41,760 --> 00:54:46,000 another level of media or disseminated 959 00:54:46,760 --> 00:54:49,760 communication to further 960 00:54:50,360 --> 00:54:53,360 how food studies, ASFS 961 00:54:53,760 --> 00:54:56,760 needs to express itself going forward. 962 00:54:57,000 --> 00:54:59,200 If so, what would you how would you see that? 963 00:54:59,200 --> 00:55:03,600 Is there a need beyond these journals you mentioned some others 964 00:55:03,600 --> 00:55:06,600 we haven't mentioned? 965 00:55:07,600 --> 00:55:10,080 I don't know that there's a need for anything additional. 966 00:55:10,080 --> 00:55:12,960 I think we we first need to work with what we have. 967 00:55:12,960 --> 00:55:15,800 You know, there's always that tendency to create something new 968 00:55:15,800 --> 00:55:18,800 because you don't want to tweak would already exist. 969 00:55:18,960 --> 00:55:20,800 You know, just work with what you have. 970 00:55:20,800 --> 00:55:22,120 We have three food journals. 971 00:55:22,120 --> 00:55:28,040 And for a field our size I think that's really, really ample 972 00:55:28,040 --> 00:55:31,040 because they all three offer something very different. 973 00:55:31,040 --> 00:55:36,040 Different. At the same time 974 00:55:36,040 --> 00:55:40,000 people aren't limited to only publishing in our three journals. 975 00:55:40,000 --> 00:55:40,480 Right. 976 00:55:40,480 --> 00:55:45,680 I mean, Radical History Review and, you know, the international journal 977 00:55:45,680 --> 00:55:48,880 of this, that and the other everybody's publishing food stuff. 978 00:55:48,880 --> 00:55:50,640 That's why I'm suggesting 979 00:55:51,960 --> 00:55:53,680 that some kind of statement 980 00:55:53,680 --> 00:55:56,680 put on our website about, hey, so you're interested in food 981 00:55:56,680 --> 00:55:59,680 studies, these are some things you might want to know. 982 00:56:00,040 --> 00:56:02,800 Some of the sources you might want to think about because, you 983 00:56:02,800 --> 00:56:06,720 know, folks out there who don't do food studies work in the main. 984 00:56:07,240 --> 00:56:10,240 Really sometimes I think think they're creating, 985 00:56:10,360 --> 00:56:13,560 a new the, you know, 986 00:56:13,600 --> 00:56:17,400 like they're the ones that came up with this, you know, I had a student one 987 00:56:17,400 --> 00:56:21,960 time, tell me about the study that they were doing in communication. 988 00:56:22,000 --> 00:56:24,880 I'm like, well, you know, there's a whole body of literature out there on that. 989 00:56:24,880 --> 00:56:27,440 And they were like, really? You know, you see what I mean? 990 00:56:27,440 --> 00:56:31,560 And so I'm like, you do know there's a field called food studies, right? 991 00:56:32,080 --> 00:56:33,400 No, they don't. 992 00:56:33,400 --> 00:56:38,440 And and I feel like that ASFS does the work does the work 993 00:56:38,440 --> 00:56:42,240 that we do a disservice by not taking that approach? 994 00:56:42,240 --> 00:56:46,040 Because let me tell you, MLA is not going to let you just publish in PMLA. 995 00:56:46,360 --> 00:56:49,000 Yeah. You know, or American history or, 996 00:56:50,200 --> 00:56:53,160 you know, isn't going to just let you publish there 997 00:56:53,160 --> 00:56:57,400 or, again, some of these other journals that there's a clearinghouse. 998 00:56:57,400 --> 00:57:00,280 And so I think we need to have one as well. 999 00:57:00,280 --> 00:57:04,320 And I do think as, as the editor in chief, Carol Counihand 1000 00:57:04,360 --> 00:57:09,360 does a great job of that with, Food and Foodways. 1001 00:57:09,360 --> 00:57:12,320 You know, she it's very clear to tell people often, 1002 00:57:12,320 --> 00:57:14,680 okay, this is not food studies, really. 1003 00:57:14,680 --> 00:57:17,240 This is actually neuroscience. 1004 00:57:17,240 --> 00:57:20,240 And you should probably publish in the neuroscience journal. 1005 00:57:20,600 --> 00:57:24,680 Because what we don't want is to just pass everything off 1006 00:57:24,680 --> 00:57:28,000 as food studies work, because then you're not 1007 00:57:28,320 --> 00:57:32,120 getting at the essence of what, what we do 1008 00:57:32,160 --> 00:57:35,160 and the arguments that we're trying to make. 1009 00:57:36,600 --> 00:57:40,880 And so here I'm not arguing for, I'm saying those three are enough 1010 00:57:40,880 --> 00:57:44,560 because if we have our imprint 1011 00:57:44,560 --> 00:57:48,640 on other publications in a way that 1012 00:57:50,000 --> 00:57:52,080 says, yes, this person is 1013 00:57:52,080 --> 00:57:55,960 is doing food studies work, I think we're okay, especially since 1014 00:57:56,720 --> 00:57:59,200 we who do this work are often 1015 00:57:59,200 --> 00:58:02,200 the ones who are reviewing for these other journals. 1016 00:58:02,440 --> 00:58:05,440 Yeah, because they don't have anyone there like I know, you know, 1017 00:58:05,920 --> 00:58:06,960 it happens all the time. 1018 00:58:06,960 --> 00:58:07,960 All the time. Right? 1019 00:58:07,960 --> 00:58:13,720 I was asked to do a, you know, review something for the Journal of Geriatrics, 1020 00:58:13,720 --> 00:58:17,520 you know, because it dealt with food and culture, 1021 00:58:17,520 --> 00:58:19,160 food, culture and literature, actually. 1022 00:58:19,160 --> 00:58:22,600 And unfortunately, that that request came through at a time 1023 00:58:22,600 --> 00:58:25,600 that I was dealing with my own funeralizing, 1024 00:58:26,080 --> 00:58:29,520 and so I wasn't able to get the review completed. 1025 00:58:29,520 --> 00:58:35,000 But the bottom line is, you know, I was I was honored to be asked 1026 00:58:35,000 --> 00:58:38,600 because I'm like, now I'm engaging this other field, which is great. 1027 00:58:39,280 --> 00:58:43,240 But, ultimately, you know, 1028 00:58:43,680 --> 00:58:46,680 I don't know if the what became of the piece, 1029 00:58:47,040 --> 00:58:50,120 but yeah, I just think we should recognize 1030 00:58:50,120 --> 00:58:53,240 that those are dynamics that reflect on the field. 1031 00:58:55,280 --> 00:58:55,920 Good. 1032 00:58:55,920 --> 00:58:57,920 So they raised this 1033 00:58:57,920 --> 00:59:02,280 Okay, I'll say a point of reference in my old department at NYU. 1034 00:59:02,280 --> 00:59:05,280 Initially, they had two ways you could study food, 1035 00:59:05,280 --> 00:59:07,040 at least in the Master's level. 1036 00:59:07,040 --> 00:59:10,680 They you studied it kind of through humanities or social sciences. 1037 00:59:10,800 --> 00:59:14,360 Social sciences, you know, environmental studies, 1038 00:59:14,520 --> 00:59:18,800 economics, poli sci as opposed to lit, anthro, etc.. 1039 00:59:19,320 --> 00:59:22,240 And so they have this question 1040 00:59:22,240 --> 00:59:28,360 or outline of three pillars that define food production, distribution, 1041 00:59:28,360 --> 00:59:31,360 and consumption that are outside 1042 00:59:31,800 --> 00:59:34,800 traditional academic labor in quotes. 1043 00:59:35,440 --> 00:59:38,480 How do we, as food studies scholar, 1044 00:59:38,840 --> 00:59:42,440 try to integrate our research or lived experience with 1045 00:59:42,680 --> 00:59:46,320 within this definitions of labor or varying 1046 00:59:46,320 --> 00:59:49,320 definitions of labor? 1047 00:59:50,640 --> 00:59:53,640 Well, I mean. 1048 00:59:56,440 --> 00:59:59,440 We integrated by. 1049 01:00:01,600 --> 01:00:03,920 If you're going to talk about your lived experience. 1050 01:00:06,080 --> 01:00:07,880 And in the areas 1051 01:00:07,880 --> 01:00:11,000 perhaps that you study or that you have experience, 1052 01:00:11,680 --> 01:00:14,680 I mean, it goes back to what I was sharing early on 1053 01:00:15,240 --> 01:00:18,680 about the reasons why I tease out 1054 01:00:18,880 --> 01:00:21,880 what happens when you are preparing a meal 1055 01:00:22,840 --> 01:00:26,240 that's based on a gendered perspective of 1056 01:00:26,280 --> 01:00:30,760 in the cases that I've been talking about, is based on a racialized perspective. 1057 01:00:32,240 --> 01:00:36,520 And it speaks very much to labor, 1058 01:00:36,520 --> 01:00:40,120 which, of course, for a lot of African-American, 1059 01:00:40,600 --> 01:00:44,240 people who do work around 1060 01:00:44,240 --> 01:00:47,800 black food studies, labor is at the center 1061 01:00:47,800 --> 01:00:51,880 of that conversation, because more often than not, we're laboring for someone else. 1062 01:00:51,880 --> 01:00:52,480 Right? 1063 01:00:52,480 --> 01:00:55,840 Whether it was on plantations, 1064 01:00:55,840 --> 01:00:59,080 on farms, in sharecropping situations. 1065 01:00:59,680 --> 01:01:00,120 Gee's Bend 1066 01:01:00,120 --> 01:01:04,240 and the whole, you know, horror of what happened there. 1067 01:01:04,640 --> 01:01:08,680 So, it's either it's always been either been our labor 1068 01:01:08,680 --> 01:01:13,120 has been exploited or is non-existent or not even acknowledged. 1069 01:01:14,880 --> 01:01:17,880 Or, you know, we are 1070 01:01:18,000 --> 01:01:22,240 doing the work of carrying something on our back. 1071 01:01:22,520 --> 01:01:28,760 I was thinking about this the other day, with the dandyism at the Met Gala. 1072 01:01:29,000 --> 01:01:30,200 Right. 1073 01:01:30,200 --> 01:01:32,920 Because, you know, I as I was telling the audience 1074 01:01:32,920 --> 01:01:37,440 over the weekend in Building Houses, I do a read of, 1075 01:01:37,800 --> 01:01:41,240 the sheet music, greeting cards, note cards, 1076 01:01:42,160 --> 01:01:48,240 stereo views, all of which have this image of, 1077 01:01:48,240 --> 01:01:52,960 Black men more than likely stealing chicken or taking chicken. 1078 01:01:53,360 --> 01:01:57,800 Who's in the top coat with a top hat or some kind of bowler 1079 01:01:58,440 --> 01:02:01,440 bomb hat or what have you. 1080 01:02:02,040 --> 01:02:06,760 And that image is also in Birth of a Nation. 1081 01:02:09,040 --> 01:02:10,520 And that dandy. 1082 01:02:10,520 --> 01:02:13,360 Yes. That's it, that's it, that's it. 1083 01:02:13,360 --> 01:02:14,800 I have that in my collection. 1084 01:02:14,800 --> 01:02:16,360 I love that image. Right. 1085 01:02:16,360 --> 01:02:18,360 And, you know, this is the thing I don't know 1086 01:02:18,360 --> 01:02:21,800 if your caption says the same thing is the caption that I have, 1087 01:02:22,480 --> 01:02:25,000 because I've, I've seen that same image 1088 01:02:25,000 --> 01:02:28,720 with different captions or the same caption on a different image. 1089 01:02:31,280 --> 01:02:31,840 But that 1090 01:02:31,840 --> 01:02:34,840 that person was it was known as zip coon. 1091 01:02:35,000 --> 01:02:36,480 Right. 1092 01:02:36,480 --> 01:02:38,880 And that very much ties in 1093 01:02:38,880 --> 01:02:41,880 to the dandy, you know, image. 1094 01:02:41,880 --> 01:02:45,000 So again, it's like every, you know, you 1095 01:02:45,000 --> 01:02:49,240 I can see almost anything and see Black food in there. 1096 01:02:49,480 --> 01:02:50,480 Right. 1097 01:02:50,480 --> 01:02:55,480 Or some element of, of food related to Black people and our role in it 1098 01:02:55,960 --> 01:03:00,280 in procuring and preparing and presenting 1099 01:03:00,520 --> 01:03:05,920 and consuming in discarding and then, you know, runs the gambit. 1100 01:03:06,200 --> 01:03:07,760 Right. 1101 01:03:07,760 --> 01:03:10,520 And if you're going to stick with that image for a second, 1102 01:03:10,520 --> 01:03:13,520 if I could pick it up and look to, 1103 01:03:13,720 --> 01:03:16,320 mine has, I think, seven languages. 1104 01:03:16,320 --> 01:03:18,000 Russian. It's got Portuguese. 1105 01:03:18,000 --> 01:03:21,280 It's got, it's got it's not it has French, it has Spanish. 1106 01:03:22,080 --> 01:03:25,120 I think it has German, but it has Swedish like. 1107 01:03:25,120 --> 01:03:29,280 Okay, so what is this about this circulation in the early 20th century? 1108 01:03:29,280 --> 01:03:29,760 That's right. 1109 01:03:29,760 --> 01:03:33,640 The talk about Black labor and Black food and Black quote unquote, 1110 01:03:33,640 --> 01:03:39,160 criminality and Black dandyism all in one package. Yes. 1111 01:03:39,680 --> 01:03:42,000 Which speak And stereotypes, right? 1112 01:03:42,000 --> 01:03:47,240 And so to know that that image circulated so widely, 1113 01:03:47,600 --> 01:03:52,680 a stereotypical image mind you of people with chicken and watermelon. 1114 01:03:53,120 --> 01:03:54,800 You know, this is what I mean. 1115 01:03:54,800 --> 01:03:57,880 This is why you can't just get back to the food, okay? 1116 01:03:57,880 --> 01:03:58,480 Pick a food. 1117 01:03:58,480 --> 01:04:01,360 Let me. Let's have that conversation too. 1118 01:04:01,360 --> 01:04:02,320 Right. 1119 01:04:02,320 --> 01:04:05,800 The, the the ways in which 1120 01:04:05,800 --> 01:04:09,960 systemic and systematic issues of racism 1121 01:04:10,520 --> 01:04:16,320 and inequality and disinformation 1122 01:04:17,080 --> 01:04:22,360 and, misrepresentation permeate food. 1123 01:04:23,400 --> 01:04:25,200 The layers. 1124 01:04:25,200 --> 01:04:29,160 It'll take us multiple lifetime times to unpack it. 1125 01:04:29,680 --> 01:04:30,440 Right. 1126 01:04:30,440 --> 01:04:33,600 And so when we start talking 1127 01:04:33,600 --> 01:04:37,240 about this role of ASFS 1128 01:04:37,240 --> 01:04:40,960 it's a heavy one for us, 1129 01:04:41,200 --> 01:04:44,000 this is why I don't 1130 01:04:44,000 --> 01:04:47,200 attend oftentimes a lot of these meetings, because 1131 01:04:48,400 --> 01:04:52,520 I don't have the patience for that way of thinking any longer. 1132 01:04:52,520 --> 01:04:55,520 We've been doing this work for a very long time. 1133 01:04:55,600 --> 01:05:02,040 And we need roles where within the organization, 1134 01:05:02,040 --> 01:05:04,480 as a part of the organization, 1135 01:05:04,480 --> 01:05:08,560 as a part of the history and future of the organization, 1136 01:05:08,680 --> 01:05:14,160 and where multiple view viewpoints are going to be expected, 1137 01:05:14,240 --> 01:05:17,240 not as, 1138 01:05:17,800 --> 01:05:22,000 As an anomaly, but as an essential part of building out 1139 01:05:22,000 --> 01:05:27,000 what we understand to be the Association for the Study of Food and Society. 1140 01:05:27,640 --> 01:05:28,440 Right. 1141 01:05:28,440 --> 01:05:31,880 I tell people all the time, you know, 1142 01:05:31,880 --> 01:05:36,160 we haven't even begun, for example, to talk about food and movement. 1143 01:05:37,000 --> 01:05:41,040 And so I was telling, you know, Ava Purkiss wrote this book 1144 01:05:41,040 --> 01:05:44,040 about Black women and exercise, 1145 01:05:44,320 --> 01:05:47,680 and a phenomenal book, and, 1146 01:05:48,640 --> 01:05:49,920 you know, 1147 01:05:49,920 --> 01:05:53,040 these notions that Black people don't like to exercise. 1148 01:05:53,040 --> 01:05:56,640 We don't like to work out, you know, we want to be unhealthy. 1149 01:05:56,640 --> 01:05:57,160 We want our bodies. 1150 01:05:57,160 --> 01:06:00,080 I say this all the time is part of Eating While Black. 1151 01:06:00,080 --> 01:06:04,240 But if you want to have that conversation, Ahmaud Arbery has a word for you. 1152 01:06:04,600 --> 01:06:09,080 You know, because he was out exercising, trying to heal his body 1153 01:06:09,080 --> 01:06:12,880 and be well when he was gunned down by white supremacists. 1154 01:06:12,880 --> 01:06:13,240 Right? 1155 01:06:13,240 --> 01:06:18,200 So, don't tell me that that is not a food conversation, 1156 01:06:18,520 --> 01:06:24,640 you know, because it gets right back into, this notion that Black people are lazy 1157 01:06:24,640 --> 01:06:28,640 and we're not this and we're not that when we're always ever present. 1158 01:06:28,960 --> 01:06:32,440 We were in Davis the other day, as I said, in UC Davis, 1159 01:06:32,440 --> 01:06:35,240 and we saw these young Black men running down the street, 1160 01:06:35,240 --> 01:06:38,480 and we're really nervous for them because it was late at night. 1161 01:06:39,040 --> 01:06:42,160 And I mean just that very anywhere else 1162 01:06:42,160 --> 01:06:46,160 that could have been misconstrued as theft as something. 1163 01:06:46,160 --> 01:06:48,120 And, you know, it's hard 1164 01:06:48,120 --> 01:06:52,000 to believe we still live in this era where we're having these conversations, 1165 01:06:53,320 --> 01:06:56,320 but we are, you know, and, 1166 01:06:56,480 --> 01:06:59,880 it would be nothing for someone to say, oh, he must have stolen something 1167 01:06:59,880 --> 01:07:01,480 oh he probably stole a watermelon. 1168 01:07:01,480 --> 01:07:05,680 So, you know, literally, I can't even begin to say, 1169 01:07:05,920 --> 01:07:08,480 oh, that wouldn't never happen, because we know that it would. 1170 01:07:08,480 --> 01:07:13,960 And I think that ASFS as not recognizing that level 1171 01:07:15,280 --> 01:07:19,280 of day to day life for Black people in America, 1172 01:07:19,280 --> 01:07:22,360 but beyond the American walls, beyond. 1173 01:07:22,840 --> 01:07:25,320 Right. 1174 01:07:25,320 --> 01:07:30,640 Does a disservice to those of us who do this 1175 01:07:30,640 --> 01:07:35,160 work on a day to day basis. Yeah, I was really grateful 1176 01:07:35,320 --> 01:07:40,320 I don't know if you saw when he was gunned down, several runners magazines, 1177 01:07:40,520 --> 01:07:44,760 championed that Black people should be able to run, run. 1178 01:07:44,760 --> 01:07:46,680 Absolutely. Yeah. 1179 01:07:46,680 --> 01:07:49,720 So they raise a question that I think we've just addressed, but 1180 01:07:50,200 --> 01:07:55,080 basically has the have we gone too big for our britches in the sense of 1181 01:07:55,480 --> 01:07:59,800 are there too many cuisines and subjects than there are people studying them? 1182 01:08:00,280 --> 01:08:04,680 And I think the answer you just gave shows that we have more work that can be done. 1183 01:08:05,080 --> 01:08:08,480 Yes. I mean, we're tip of the iceberg on a certain level. 1184 01:08:08,920 --> 01:08:10,240 Yeah, absolutely. Okay. 1185 01:08:10,240 --> 01:08:12,720 I mean who cares, too many topics. What? Yeah. 1186 01:08:12,720 --> 01:08:13,840 That's what I think. Yeah. 1187 01:08:13,840 --> 01:08:15,320 Because you got 1188 01:08:15,320 --> 01:08:18,840 I mean, how do you tell people that their conversations 1189 01:08:18,840 --> 01:08:22,640 about their lives are not important or relevant or necessary 1190 01:08:23,320 --> 01:08:25,120 and, you know, to what you said too I just want to 1191 01:08:25,120 --> 01:08:28,360 say, let's move, Michelle Obama, that they're trying to go up now. 1192 01:08:28,600 --> 01:08:31,560 Oh yeah, that's a whole I mean, that's 1193 01:08:31,560 --> 01:08:34,560 a whole other conversation, you know, just. 1194 01:08:34,600 --> 01:08:36,000 Yeah. Yeah. 1195 01:08:36,000 --> 01:08:39,520 You know, so now we're in this part that they're talking about 1196 01:08:39,520 --> 01:08:42,920 called cultural ethnicity, ethnicity, class, and diversity, 1197 01:08:43,760 --> 01:08:48,040 and they're asking pointed questions about the diversity of its membership, 1198 01:08:48,240 --> 01:08:52,840 of the membership along cultural, ethnic, class, gender, 1199 01:08:53,880 --> 01:08:56,880 sexuality, generational terms 1200 01:08:57,880 --> 01:09:00,880 broadly, I think it's growing. 1201 01:09:01,200 --> 01:09:03,640 I see more diversity than I used to. 1202 01:09:03,640 --> 01:09:04,960 Yeah. 1203 01:09:04,960 --> 01:09:07,080 And that. Yay for them. Yeah. 1204 01:09:07,080 --> 01:09:10,960 And so that, you know, so there's a time now where it seems to me 1205 01:09:10,960 --> 01:09:15,360 that we've outgrown this sort of older models of voting and, 1206 01:09:15,680 --> 01:09:18,920 you know, inviting people to be a part of the board. 1207 01:09:19,360 --> 01:09:21,360 And I shared all this with our colleague. 1208 01:09:21,360 --> 01:09:26,280 I mean, you know, as we grow, there are lots of things that have to be worked out, 1209 01:09:26,720 --> 01:09:27,320 but there are 1210 01:09:27,320 --> 01:09:31,200 lots of midsize organizations, so we don't have to reinvent the wheel. 1211 01:09:31,200 --> 01:09:31,560 Right? 1212 01:09:31,560 --> 01:09:36,040 American Folklore and others have a very systematic way 1213 01:09:36,040 --> 01:09:41,520 of recognizing the will of the body and their desires. 1214 01:09:41,520 --> 01:09:45,240 But long gone are the ages when we can just sort of say, 1215 01:09:46,000 --> 01:09:50,960 you know, well, you've got to do X, Y, and Z in order to be on the board. 1216 01:09:50,960 --> 01:09:52,280 I mean, then we need to do 1217 01:09:52,280 --> 01:09:56,160 some voting on the bylaws to change things, because time is changed. 1218 01:09:57,200 --> 01:10:00,200 And it's you know, I know that from when I was in Southern Foodways, 1219 01:10:00,360 --> 01:10:03,040 we ended up having two boards because they needed 1220 01:10:03,040 --> 01:10:06,040 an advisory board who brought in money and they needed a creative board. 1221 01:10:06,240 --> 01:10:07,200 That's right. 1222 01:10:07,200 --> 01:10:10,200 And they're they're totally distinct. 1223 01:10:10,400 --> 01:10:12,560 Absolutely. They're distinct. And we need that. 1224 01:10:12,560 --> 01:10:15,920 And we need to hear more voices from South Africa. 1225 01:10:15,920 --> 01:10:18,200 We need to bring more voices from Brazil. 1226 01:10:18,200 --> 01:10:22,320 Yeah, we need to hear more voices from, you know, the Philippines. 1227 01:10:22,320 --> 01:10:24,880 And so and the people are doing this work. 1228 01:10:24,880 --> 01:10:25,200 Yeah. 1229 01:10:25,200 --> 01:10:30,720 You know, and so having a sort of international set of voices that is 1230 01:10:30,720 --> 01:10:35,480 does not only see international as European. 1231 01:10:36,200 --> 01:10:41,160 I think is is an important direction that we need to move in because, 1232 01:10:41,880 --> 01:10:45,120 that's where we have grown to. 1233 01:10:45,120 --> 01:10:50,720 And, and the organization should begin to reflect the makeup of the, of the field, 1234 01:10:51,160 --> 01:10:55,920 even if it doesn't reflect right now the makeup of the organization itself. 1235 01:10:56,240 --> 01:10:59,720 Well, I don't know if you got involved with this conversation with Dan, 1236 01:10:59,720 --> 01:11:04,080 the new president, but I did, in part because I'm on this committee. 1237 01:11:04,080 --> 01:11:08,320 But, one of the things I thought was interesting that is germane 1238 01:11:08,320 --> 01:11:12,360 to what we're talking about is that he you know, he's a very, 1239 01:11:13,360 --> 01:11:15,360 at times theoretical guy, 1240 01:11:15,360 --> 01:11:17,760 talking about the nature 1241 01:11:17,760 --> 01:11:20,760 of an organization in this climate 1242 01:11:20,800 --> 01:11:25,480 and particularly that by happenstance, this year we start on Juneteenth. 1243 01:11:25,800 --> 01:11:28,600 So the title, official title has race in the title, 1244 01:11:28,600 --> 01:11:31,600 and we have this new racist president. 1245 01:11:32,040 --> 01:11:34,000 And the issues are 1246 01:11:34,000 --> 01:11:37,880 themes that often get taken up around climate change and gender 1247 01:11:37,880 --> 01:11:42,880 and race and labor are antithetical to the administration's belief system. 1248 01:11:42,880 --> 01:11:47,560 And so I think you probably know this, but there are several mechanisms 1249 01:11:47,560 --> 01:11:50,640 so that if you are, school that needs you to have 1250 01:11:50,640 --> 01:11:53,680 a certificate to reimburse you, they'll make a blank one. 1251 01:11:53,680 --> 01:11:55,400 So it doesn't say anything about race. 1252 01:11:55,400 --> 01:11:58,640 You need to have your pronouns removed, etc.. 1253 01:11:59,120 --> 01:12:04,480 And as part of it, as any nonprofit, you have to have a public meeting. 1254 01:12:05,640 --> 01:12:08,440 But it's and according to Dan's logic, 1255 01:12:08,440 --> 01:12:11,880 which I don't I'm not necessarily disagreeing with. 1256 01:12:12,720 --> 01:12:16,400 One of the hidden agendas of this administration is to make it 1257 01:12:16,400 --> 01:12:21,880 very physically difficult for organizations to exist, in fraternal way 1258 01:12:22,360 --> 01:12:26,760 and into our earlier question, I guess, is the question I'm trying to formulate 1259 01:12:27,440 --> 01:12:30,880 as opposed to other journals, I think, modalities 1260 01:12:31,280 --> 01:12:36,040 and what you're talking about because, I know, for example, 1261 01:12:37,080 --> 01:12:39,240 my organizations 1262 01:12:39,240 --> 01:12:43,200 like LASA and BRASA that are about Latin America flip 1263 01:12:43,200 --> 01:12:46,880 generally between or as what flips between, 1264 01:12:47,400 --> 01:12:50,280 but then some of them, I understand 1265 01:12:50,280 --> 01:12:53,280 it's expensive to add a hybrid component. 1266 01:12:53,560 --> 01:12:58,360 I think we have to really rethink what it means to bring people together 1267 01:12:58,760 --> 01:13:02,160 in real time, in virtual time, in hybrid time, 1268 01:13:02,720 --> 01:13:06,280 to be able to extend these conversations to where they need 1269 01:13:06,280 --> 01:13:11,240 to find their voice or their, their cohort. 1270 01:13:11,680 --> 01:13:15,120 I think that, to me is as much more 1271 01:13:15,840 --> 01:13:19,600 on the front line of how we want to look forward. 1272 01:13:20,080 --> 01:13:20,920 Yeah. 1273 01:13:22,160 --> 01:13:24,920 And, you know, and to that end, 1274 01:13:24,920 --> 01:13:28,480 I know there have been complaints that some people who are foreign, I think 1275 01:13:28,480 --> 01:13:32,480 largely European, but whatever have asked why it has to be in the United States. 1276 01:13:32,720 --> 01:13:35,720 And I think it's particularly because of the administration. 1277 01:13:36,120 --> 01:13:39,400 But having said that, I notice from when I've been on the board 1278 01:13:39,400 --> 01:13:43,960 or been a host when I was in New York, when it's on the coast, 1279 01:13:43,960 --> 01:13:48,880 you get a different, engagement because people can get from abroad. 1280 01:13:49,720 --> 01:13:52,880 And it's not as and very different than when it's in the middle of our country. 1281 01:13:53,280 --> 01:13:54,360 Right. 1282 01:13:54,360 --> 01:13:57,360 So I think there's something to be said for that. 1283 01:13:57,600 --> 01:14:01,600 They're asking a question to go forward 1284 01:14:01,600 --> 01:14:04,600 about how, I guess, how we 1285 01:14:05,560 --> 01:14:08,920 are in conversation or work in conjunction 1286 01:14:09,360 --> 01:14:12,600 with these, area studies 1287 01:14:12,600 --> 01:14:15,600 like women and gender, LatinX, 1288 01:14:16,240 --> 01:14:19,960 East Asian, you know, more, I guess, more focused 1289 01:14:20,960 --> 01:14:23,960 area studies. 1290 01:14:25,840 --> 01:14:27,320 It's, 1291 01:14:27,320 --> 01:14:30,320 centers or departments and universities. 1292 01:14:30,400 --> 01:14:33,400 And how are we dealing with 1293 01:14:33,720 --> 01:14:36,720 the changing of the guard and in the Academy? 1294 01:14:38,080 --> 01:14:38,920 Yeah. 1295 01:14:38,920 --> 01:14:40,440 I mean, a couple of things. 1296 01:14:40,440 --> 01:14:44,240 One, I see the point about not always meeting in the U.S. 1297 01:14:44,240 --> 01:14:47,320 it makes a lot of sense, except the majority in the membership. 1298 01:14:47,320 --> 01:14:49,080 I think right now is U.S. based. 1299 01:14:49,080 --> 01:14:49,520 Yeah. 1300 01:14:49,520 --> 01:14:52,520 So, that makes a lot of sense as well. 1301 01:14:52,800 --> 01:14:56,320 And so going forward, 1302 01:14:57,120 --> 01:15:00,160 I mean, I'm hoping that we're not going to remain 1303 01:15:00,160 --> 01:15:02,280 in this cultural moment, you know, 1304 01:15:02,280 --> 01:15:04,960 all hope and we're not going to remain in this cultural moment. 1305 01:15:04,960 --> 01:15:07,800 I know, I know, right. 1306 01:15:07,800 --> 01:15:11,440 And so we take it one day at a time and we see what we see. 1307 01:15:11,440 --> 01:15:12,800 Right. It's great 1308 01:15:12,800 --> 01:15:17,760 that ASFS is meeting over Juneteenth and I remember the conversation around that. 1309 01:15:18,160 --> 01:15:22,000 Unfortunately, I won't be there this year because I've got another engagement 1310 01:15:22,000 --> 01:15:23,560 because it's Juneteenth right. 1311 01:15:24,880 --> 01:15:26,240 And so there's that piece. 1312 01:15:26,240 --> 01:15:31,320 And then secondly about how do we engage area studies. 1313 01:15:31,320 --> 01:15:33,400 I mean 1314 01:15:33,400 --> 01:15:35,560 yeah, I, I think we are 1315 01:15:35,560 --> 01:15:38,640 well past having area studies 1316 01:15:39,880 --> 01:15:42,000 meetings. Yeah. 1317 01:15:42,000 --> 01:15:45,160 It's like I said immigrant food is American food 1318 01:15:45,560 --> 01:15:47,800 area studies is American studies. 1319 01:15:47,800 --> 01:15:49,880 It's it's food studies. 1320 01:15:49,880 --> 01:15:54,080 You know, you just put people on the program and have at it, 1321 01:15:54,120 --> 01:15:58,320 you know, here's the thing that's always interesting to me. 1322 01:15:58,320 --> 01:16:01,320 People are going to find each other at these. 1323 01:16:01,320 --> 01:16:03,760 They're going to do their own area thing. 1324 01:16:03,760 --> 01:16:06,080 And, and I'm happy for them. 1325 01:16:06,080 --> 01:16:09,000 You know, if, if Asian Americans want to come together 1326 01:16:09,000 --> 01:16:12,280 or Asian people want to go, you have at it, you know, do your thing. 1327 01:16:12,600 --> 01:16:16,000 You know, we even when we convened at, 1328 01:16:16,480 --> 01:16:20,920 a feminist food studies, meeting in Minnesota a couple of years 1329 01:16:20,920 --> 01:16:23,800 back, you know, the Black women who were there got together. 1330 01:16:23,800 --> 01:16:25,320 I mean, that's just an automatic. 1331 01:16:25,320 --> 01:16:27,400 It's like, yeah, we're going to dinner 1332 01:16:27,400 --> 01:16:31,760 and and, oftentimes you don't have to announce it. 1333 01:16:31,760 --> 01:16:36,000 You just, you know, who who wants to go to dinner, you know, and then you go and 1334 01:16:37,240 --> 01:16:38,200 and so these 1335 01:16:38,200 --> 01:16:41,200 things are much more organic without the need 1336 01:16:41,200 --> 01:16:45,360 for always having an intervention or someone to organize it. 1337 01:16:45,680 --> 01:16:50,320 And ASFS just needs to acknowledge, I think that, food studies is, 1338 01:16:50,360 --> 01:16:54,000 is celebrated throughout the world and that we want to hold up everyone 1339 01:16:54,000 --> 01:16:57,800 equally is the point and give everyone voice and time and space 1340 01:16:58,240 --> 01:17:01,240 to do the work that they are doing. 1341 01:17:03,840 --> 01:17:07,600 So I'll be honest with you, I feel like we've dealt with that. 1342 01:17:07,600 --> 01:17:10,840 The next area that's asking about national or international 1343 01:17:12,200 --> 01:17:15,240 engagement, we've really just spoken about, 1344 01:17:15,360 --> 01:17:20,000 and we've identified, as they do that it's a largely North 1345 01:17:20,000 --> 01:17:24,120 American organization, but there is a need to expand the horizon. 1346 01:17:24,880 --> 01:17:27,880 I don't know, there's, 1347 01:17:28,840 --> 01:17:29,920 Anything more to say? 1348 01:17:29,920 --> 01:17:34,000 I'm happy if you have something else you want to say, but I'm at a place where 1349 01:17:34,480 --> 01:17:37,720 we've touched in some way on all other topics. 1350 01:17:38,120 --> 01:17:41,880 And then, of course, the the end game is, you know, the, the 1351 01:17:42,880 --> 01:17:44,800 big bucket, 1352 01:17:44,800 --> 01:17:47,680 you know, hopes for the next 40 years. 1353 01:17:47,680 --> 01:17:50,680 What are the hopes 1354 01:17:50,920 --> 01:17:54,480 for food studies and ASFS, for the next 40 years. 1355 01:17:54,880 --> 01:17:57,880 And is there anything you'd like to say in closing? 1356 01:18:01,840 --> 01:18:04,840 Well, I think what I would say is the future of, 1357 01:18:04,840 --> 01:18:07,600 food studies is that the more we do 1358 01:18:07,600 --> 01:18:10,600 this work, the more people are excited about it 1359 01:18:11,440 --> 01:18:14,520 and are animated by it and are going to be doing it, 1360 01:18:14,520 --> 01:18:17,880 and we should grow as the field is growing. 1361 01:18:18,360 --> 01:18:18,960 Right? 1362 01:18:18,960 --> 01:18:23,200 In the directions that people are going, 1363 01:18:23,640 --> 01:18:26,680 whether it's anthropology 1364 01:18:26,680 --> 01:18:29,680 or anthropological or we are, 1365 01:18:30,280 --> 01:18:33,360 lots of people are going to be writing about this cultural moment right here 1366 01:18:33,360 --> 01:18:37,760 at some point we're going to see a whole rack of things around tariffs and so forth, 1367 01:18:38,360 --> 01:18:41,400 and we're also going to be seeing, like we did with Covid, 1368 01:18:41,720 --> 01:18:46,120 you know, special issues coming out around what, you know, food around Covid. 1369 01:18:46,320 --> 01:18:49,320 We need to make place for it. Right. 1370 01:18:49,320 --> 01:18:52,160 If we're going to be the Association 1371 01:18:52,160 --> 01:18:55,240 for the Study of Food and Society, I mean, society's big. 1372 01:18:55,760 --> 01:18:58,360 Yeah. Right. And so you can't 1373 01:19:00,160 --> 01:19:00,880 you can't have 1374 01:19:00,880 --> 01:19:05,200 society and then sort of close off different facets of society. 1375 01:19:05,200 --> 01:19:05,480 Right? 1376 01:19:05,480 --> 01:19:10,320 So as I see us growing, I just would love to see the membership grow. 1377 01:19:10,600 --> 01:19:15,880 I would love to see us, engage different racial, ethnic, 1378 01:19:16,240 --> 01:19:20,520 multiple orientations, neurodivergence and food. 1379 01:19:20,560 --> 01:19:24,160 I mean, I remember when we did Taking Food Public Redefining Foodways 1380 01:19:24,160 --> 01:19:28,360 in a Changing World, Carole Counihan and I, we had one 1381 01:19:28,640 --> 01:19:31,640 article on disability, one. 1382 01:19:31,760 --> 01:19:34,960 It's a whole area now. It's a whole area 1383 01:19:34,960 --> 01:19:38,520 now, we couldn't find anyone to write on disability. 1384 01:19:38,920 --> 01:19:39,320 Right. 1385 01:19:39,320 --> 01:19:42,400 And so, you know, let's open that up. 1386 01:19:42,400 --> 01:19:44,160 Let's let's have those conversations. 1387 01:19:44,160 --> 01:19:47,160 We should be seeing those panels so that 1388 01:19:47,400 --> 01:19:50,240 people who are doing that work, whatever discipline they're 1389 01:19:50,240 --> 01:19:54,080 in, will feel like they can come to ASFS and have a voice, 1390 01:19:54,080 --> 01:19:58,320 have a home, have a place that they can be in communion and conversation 1391 01:19:58,600 --> 01:20:01,600 with other scholars who are doing that work that they're doing. 1392 01:20:01,720 --> 01:20:06,080 So I'm excited about that future and hope that we remain open, 1393 01:20:06,520 --> 01:20:10,720 and welcoming to people who want to do that work while 1394 01:20:10,720 --> 01:20:15,160 at the same time being very clear about this is what food studies can look like. 1395 01:20:15,400 --> 01:20:18,400 This is part of what it should look like, or beginnings 1396 01:20:18,400 --> 01:20:20,040 of what it should look like. 1397 01:20:20,040 --> 01:20:22,680 And, and, 1398 01:20:22,680 --> 01:20:25,680 and that people need to acknowledge those earlier, 1399 01:20:25,960 --> 01:20:29,400 you know, groundbreaking work that helped to set the, the, 1400 01:20:30,040 --> 01:20:32,880 the stage for the work that is coming behind it. 1401 01:20:32,880 --> 01:20:36,080 So yeah, I can't I can't agree more. 1402 01:20:36,520 --> 01:20:39,280 I had a teacher in graduate school 1403 01:20:39,280 --> 01:20:43,760 whose child has unfortunately died, who I can't think of her 1404 01:20:44,800 --> 01:20:46,920 disability, but had a severe disability 1405 01:20:46,920 --> 01:20:50,440 that had a lot of physical manifestations that took her out in her 20s. 1406 01:20:50,840 --> 01:20:53,920 But she had started a disabled film festival 1407 01:20:54,360 --> 01:20:58,280 that gave me wasn't per se about food, but food came into it. 1408 01:20:59,080 --> 01:21:02,320 I had a colleague at Montclair State when I was working as an adjunct 1409 01:21:02,320 --> 01:21:05,320 who is an anthropology, anthropologist, 1410 01:21:05,440 --> 01:21:08,440 disability studies, and a lot of it was about food. 1411 01:21:08,760 --> 01:21:10,680 And she taught me a whole lot. 1412 01:21:10,680 --> 01:21:14,080 You know, I was on a panel with her, so I can't agree with you more. 1413 01:21:14,080 --> 01:21:16,080 And, you know, as a closer, even though I don't 1414 01:21:16,080 --> 01:21:19,960 like to talk about them, I happened to look at this crazy 1415 01:21:19,960 --> 01:21:24,040 crypto dinner that he held, in Virginia. 1416 01:21:24,040 --> 01:21:27,120 And when you look at the I looked up the menu. 1417 01:21:28,240 --> 01:21:30,160 The menu was created 1418 01:21:30,160 --> 01:21:33,040 to have what could be two Mexican or two Black people 1419 01:21:33,040 --> 01:21:36,040 in the kitchen making 1420 01:21:36,080 --> 01:21:38,880 really quick, catered low 1421 01:21:38,880 --> 01:21:44,080 end for 200 people because, okay, there's there are Black people 1422 01:21:44,080 --> 01:21:48,760 or colored people in this kitchen for these elite whites. 1423 01:21:50,040 --> 01:21:52,920 And so for me, I was like, oh, it's right here. 1424 01:21:52,920 --> 01:21:55,520 I don't really need to write about that, per se. 1425 01:21:55,520 --> 01:21:57,480 I'm not interested in his stuff. 1426 01:21:57,480 --> 01:21:59,680 But you wonder about food and race. 1427 01:21:59,680 --> 01:22:00,520 It's right here. 1428 01:22:00,520 --> 01:22:04,120 You could see it just as somebody who was a cook, 1429 01:22:04,400 --> 01:22:07,720 how they structured this meal and what he was willing to give his guests 1430 01:22:08,080 --> 01:22:12,520 and how much money he put into hospitality, 1431 01:22:12,520 --> 01:22:16,360 speaks a lot to this moment, to how he looks at people. 1432 01:22:16,360 --> 01:22:17,240 But who? 1433 01:22:17,240 --> 01:22:20,080 The people he would choose because he wouldn't have. 1434 01:22:20,080 --> 01:22:22,240 They were not. No offense. They were not chefs. 1435 01:22:22,240 --> 01:22:24,920 They were line cooks. 1436 01:22:24,920 --> 01:22:27,320 Prep cooks who were given a task, 1437 01:22:28,920 --> 01:22:31,920 and most likely people, men or women of color. 1438 01:22:32,480 --> 01:22:33,520 Oh, yeah. Most likely. 1439 01:22:33,520 --> 01:22:36,520 I mean, there's a whole discourse, as we know, to be written 1440 01:22:36,520 --> 01:22:38,920 about food in this moment, right? Yeah. 1441 01:22:38,920 --> 01:22:45,240 From the removal of, of, immigrant communities 1442 01:22:45,760 --> 01:22:50,000 and what that means for our food supply, for our labor supply, for, 1443 01:22:50,440 --> 01:22:53,920 you know, the ability to obtain the things 1444 01:22:54,360 --> 01:22:56,960 that we everyday take for granted. 1445 01:22:56,960 --> 01:23:00,720 And so I said only not to harp on the president, but 1446 01:23:01,520 --> 01:23:04,520 when we speak or spoke about 1447 01:23:05,280 --> 01:23:07,000 race, about, 1448 01:23:07,000 --> 01:23:11,040 too many types of food, all of these things like it's all right 1449 01:23:11,040 --> 01:23:15,160 there, you have to start to look and it's it's staring you right in the face. 1450 01:23:15,320 --> 01:23:18,320 Absolutely it is. No, it is, it really is. 1451 01:23:18,760 --> 01:23:24,120 And, that's going to be a conversation that'll be here for a while, as you know. 1452 01:23:24,160 --> 01:23:24,520 Yeah. 1453 01:23:24,520 --> 01:23:25,920 So that's 1454 01:23:25,920 --> 01:23:31,680 and and as each day passes again, when we look toward that 40 years, 1455 01:23:31,680 --> 01:23:35,120 we just don't know what's going to happen in the next day or two, 1456 01:23:35,480 --> 01:23:39,720 in the next moment or two that will turn, you know, the conversations 1457 01:23:39,720 --> 01:23:40,600 that we're going to be having. 1458 01:23:40,600 --> 01:23:43,760 But as an association, I think it's 1459 01:23:43,760 --> 01:23:46,760 it's important for us to stay pliable, 1460 01:23:46,800 --> 01:23:51,200 and focus because just like food in a moment, food 1461 01:23:51,200 --> 01:23:55,320 can spoil in a moment, food can ripen in a moment. 1462 01:23:55,840 --> 01:23:59,680 Food can, you know, disappear, know and so forth. 1463 01:23:59,680 --> 01:24:02,600 And we need to be as pliable as the work that we work. 1464 01:24:02,600 --> 01:24:05,560 The, the food that we talk about. 1465 01:24:05,560 --> 01:24:08,640 And the last thing I'm going to say to you is, you know, 1466 01:24:08,680 --> 01:24:09,760 Nina Mbgengue-Williams. 1467 01:24:09,760 --> 01:24:11,200 I don't know. Nina. 1468 01:24:11,200 --> 01:24:14,800 No. She's so she's, Edna is niece. 1469 01:24:15,080 --> 01:24:19,320 She's the one who transcribed, the second book. 1470 01:24:19,600 --> 01:24:23,840 And she's her mom, I believe, is Maddie. 1471 01:24:23,840 --> 01:24:26,720 I think it's Maddie. Well, I don't know if Maddie is still here. 1472 01:24:28,600 --> 01:24:31,240 Because if Maddie is here, she's over 100. 1473 01:24:31,240 --> 01:24:33,840 Nina lives in Denver, I believe. 1474 01:24:33,840 --> 01:24:35,360 At least in Colorado. 1475 01:24:35,360 --> 01:24:38,160 And I get, you know, if you really are going to go forward 1476 01:24:38,160 --> 01:24:43,560 with the connection you mentioned earlier, she might be the one to talk to. So. 1477 01:24:43,600 --> 01:24:44,800 So, let me know. 1478 01:24:44,800 --> 01:24:46,160 Okay. I will I will. 1479 01:24:46,160 --> 01:24:49,160 She's a good lady. She she she's solid. 1480 01:24:49,400 --> 01:24:52,600 Okay. I definitely will. Always good to talk with you Scott. 1481 01:24:52,600 --> 01:24:54,080 Yeah this was a treat for me. 1482 01:24:54,080 --> 01:24:56,360 I was really happy to get this assignment. 1483 01:24:56,360 --> 01:24:57,640 Excellent. Thank you. 1484 01:24:57,640 --> 01:25:00,320 I appreciate all your flexibility. 1485 01:25:00,320 --> 01:25:02,480 Oh, hey. We're in this together.