Michael Twitty’s Keynote at the 2015 Sustainable Agriculture Conference

We are still pondering Michael Twitty’s powerful keynote speech at the 30th Anniversary Sustainable Agriculture Conference.  If you missed it, here is the video or chew on some of our favorite quotes below:

 

“I was born between the Mason-Dixon line. I am the 14th generation of my family to be born in America. I am the child of migrants, who were the children of migrants, who were the children of migrants, who were the children of forced migrants. I am a living history interpreter. I cook food, I garden, I forage. I teach about food, spirituality, history, meaning and matter. I believe that writing is fighting and cooking is revolution.”

“Food can not only be transformative, but essential to knowledge in denying and destroying the artificial boundaries that separate us and redefine those boundaries that just are and must be.”

“Barbeque is true freedom food. It was conceived in the collision of native and African culinary genius in Caribbean and the American southeast. Barbeque was the food of pre-industrial people of color seeking refuge as maroons in the spirit of resistance against slavery and colonization. When you are a person of color, how you survive your oppression is your greatest source of cultural capital. It trickled down to those societies to become a hallmark of a uniquely polyglot and American approach of food. It brings us together because it is communal and multicultural, made and eaten in the celebration of human liberty and freedom, and bounds us and our ancestors closer together.”

“Eaters are politicians of the mouth.”

“I believe that a problem can be stated in terms of race, class, history, gender and identity. And solved in terms of food, cooking; the meeting-ground of the table and rituals of a properly enjoyed meal.”

“One of my great discoveries was that the southern white man was not by combatant, but my cousin. He is not to be blamed for his ancestry, but how he chooses to imagine his future. We must come to terms with the past in order to move forward.”

“My DNA was not black, it was a rainbow of the crossroads of humanity. Yes, I am black, Irish, gay and Jewish. Thank you, God. But, mostly I am proud to say I’m human, and Southern, by the grace of God.”

“I have nowhere to go by back to where we started because I want to reclaim the wisdom that will save us in the now.”

“What if I told you about a group of people who were passionate composters; masters of horticulture and organic agriculture. A people who wasted nothing, repurposed every human made thing that was wood, or metal or bone. What if I told you about their permaculture – how ingenious it was; how adaptive they were.  How their cuisine was fusion food, whole animal cooking, full of vegetables and fruits, foraged foods and sustainable fish and game. Well, you know those people already, they were the enslaved people. They don’t get the credit.  Their descendants, the free landowners and share-croppers, do not get the credit either. And, today, our young people who are trying to change things all over the country, but especially in the South and African American communities do not get the credit either. We have to understand something: Culinary justice is not only about making sure we attribute our recipes, and attribute the process by which those recipes and ingredients happen, but is about giving due credit to a long line of people whose knowledge and know-how was brought here by force, who were stolen, but determined to earn their respect from the moment they got here until now. But, there are more of us for the good than there are for the bad. And, this is the ultimate truth: We have to be careful about where the land goes. My new friends asked me, “What should I do with my family’s land?”  The answer is easy: Keep it.”

“Our land is our health; our land is our wealth.”

“When you know how you are, you don’t put a bullet in your brother’s back.  When you have your hands in the soil, you don’t have time to put your hands on a gun.  When you eat good food, you have the capacity to learn.  So, all of our problems, all of our challenges as a people, all go back to changing the composition of our brains by changing the composition of our soil. So, I exhort you to preserve the land.”

“Our ancestors, the mothers and fathers of Southern cuisine, who cooked and created this genius of delicacy and make-do, all the crucible of slavery, deserve our eternal respect and eternal memory. They have something to teach us; a knowledge system that is in danger of going extinct: What kind of wood do you use to cook?; when is the persimmon ripe to pick?; when is the time to harvest poke?; what is the proverbial meaning of okra?; what is the bio-energy of a hot red pepper or the wisdom of sorghum.”

“When you talk to my friend Mathew Rayford, who has Guilliard Farms in Georgia, he talks about this. When he wants to know how to garden, he doesn’t open a gardening book, he calls his grandmother. That’s the way it should be done. He asks his elders how to do this and then he tells his interns and volunteers and workers how it’s done.”

“So, farmers, cooks, eaters, growers, producers: With your seeds, tell stories; with your meals, communicate your message; with your tables, tell the truth – but most of all remember who you came from and who the future holds you responsible to.”

 

Learn more about Michael at his blog, Afroculinaria.