nyam

Home is where “yenna come nyam” meant “come and eat”.

I didn’t know that nyam was an African root word used throughout the diaspora. I didn’t know there were reasons why we were big rice eaters, that there were African retentions in the way Grandmama Sula made okra soup, in the way Granddaddy made baskets, or in the way Mr. Knowles cast his net in the river. 

What did I know from African retentions or diaspora?

- Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, Vertamae Cooks in America’s Family Kitchen, 1996

if you don’t know about the force of nature that was (is) Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, i suggest you get familiar. hailing from the South Carolina Low Country, Vertamae was a world travelling culinary griot, author, NPR correspondent, artist + mother. though grossly unknown, she was a massive presence in the lives of some of our more well-known elders + ancestors: James Baldwin, Muhammad Ali, Ed Bradley, Jessica B. Harris, Sun-Ra, Alice Walker, Victor Cruz. Vertamae’s boisterous spirit + undeniable skills with the skillet fed our pioneers + added fire to Black social + artistic movements. she is an unsung godmother to the “soul food” craze, having inspired many cooks + chefs, both Black + white. perhaps Michael Twitty said it best:

Vertamae gave voice to something that I don’t think anyone has articulated better since. When she talked about vibration and feeling and a pinch of this and a handful of that, she was saying that there’s an intelligence to the way we cook, an innovative genius, a flow. She brought a feeling of validity to something we couldn’t articulate before. Some people balk at the term ‘soul food,’ but to me it’s an extremely appropriate descriptor of her work. She said that from your soul, from the core of your emotional self, comes the best cooking—cooking that connects you to your past, your future, and the people around you.

i must agree. i, too, learned to cook by vibration. like Verta, i come from a cooking family. in the kitchen when i would ask my father “how much” of any seasoning or ingredient, when i insisted he give me a measurement, he jokingly frowned over his glasses + told me to turn in my Black card. “Black folks don’t need to measure”. so, i had to learn to wing it, or rather, to feel it. to listen, to watch, to smell, to taste, to ride the vibratory high of the spellwork that is cooking. it became my art form, a form of expression so second nature i sometimes forget to claim it as a talent or skill. because it’s not. it’s just what we do.

the “we” i refer to are my people. Black people. Africans. the sun people. the children of the diaspora. a scattering of seeds across this fine earth. across the diaspora, Black people are continuing the tradition of food work, whether it be tending crops + tiny windowsill gardens, or whippin’ around the kitchen, pots steaming, oven at the familiar 350°. throughout recorded history there are numerous accounts of how the presence of the African led to an exponential increase in agricultural knowledge + (thankfully) the use of herbs + spices to season prepared foods. evidence of the African influence is found in even the quietest corners of the globe.

as an African American, a displaced African, i can often, easily, slip into forgetting this legacy of food workers: agriculturalist + cooks, a long line of ancestors, creating + cultivating by vibration for eons, literal eons. but i / we can not afford to forget. as we spread + fall + re-root across this earth, under the oppressive lie of imperialist “individuality”, some of us, many of us, have forgotten who we are. where we come from. we have forgotten the richness of our cultures, forgotten why we move how we do. why does every Black culture or community across the diaspora have a quintessential one-pot rice dish, be it jambalaya or jollof? why does sancocho remind me so heavily of rundown? how does pate taste like an empanada + a Jamaican patty all at once? further, each of these dishes have a slew of regional + ethnic variations. these cousin dishes + meals are the culinary descendants of meals that have been cooked since before “recorded” history. we been doin’ this. we been farmers, been chefs, been creators, been storytellers, been griots. re-membering that, re-claiming that will helps us to combat the cultural erasure that colonization has desperately tried to ensure.

we can use food as way to tell our stories to each other. as a way of documenting our journeys both individually + communally. as a way to celebrate our differences, the ways we have adapted + survived generation after generation of travel + displacement. as a way to sing praises to our oneness. for no matter how far we are from the places we can call home, Africans is Africans + this whole damn world is our village.

I’ve lifted the lid on many a pot in many a place and found a taste of home - my home - in there.

- Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, Vertamae Cooks Again: More Recipes from The Americas’ Family Kitchen, 1999

i dedicate this project to my ancestors, my descendants + my community. the past, the future + the loved ones seated around me. yenna come nyam. i set the table for us. ashe.

-kdp

to learn more about the magical Vertamae, grab you a copy of her food memoir / cookbook Vibration Cooking: or, The Travels Notes of a Geechee Girl

you can also learn more about the impact of Vertamae’s legacy by visiting www.ourmotherskitchens.org