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"I think, in the organizing, and in the activism what gets lost so often is what we're working for. What we want is for all people to have some delicious, amazing, banging food!"
Bryant Terry is an eco-chef, food justice activist, and author of Vegan Soul Kitchen: Fresh, Healthy, and Creative African-American Cuisine. He is currently a Fellow in the Food and Society Policy Fellows Program, which is a national project of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
His first book, Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen, which he co-authored with Anna Lappe, won a 2007 Nautilus Award for Social Change. He was also a co-host of the PBS series, Endless Feast.
I chatted with Bryant in early February about his new cookbook, food justice, how to eat cheaply in tough economic times, and course, the yumminess of food!
You can listen to the interview on the Big Vision Podcast, or read the edited transcript below.
You have a new book coming out, Vegan Soul Kitchen. Why did you decide to write a vegan cookbook? Personally, I really liked the mac and cheese recipe in Grub. It was really good, and I really like cheese. Why a vegan cookbook?
A couple of reasons. First of all, I'll say this. In terms of "vegan" being in the title, I was reluctant to put it there because I think that it brings up a lot. It has certain connotations that often push people away who don't embrace a plant-based diet. I wanted this to be a book that would appeal to people who are vegetarians, and who are vegans, but I also wanted it to appeal to omnivores, and really present it as a book that re-interprets, re-imagines, and remembers African-American cuisine, and makes it accessible for everyone, no matter what their diet is.
I thought it was important to create a book that did not include animal products, especially because it's African-American cuisine, or "soul food." To my knowledge, there aren't any vegan soul food cookbooks published by a major publisher. I thought that it was an important intervention into the literature to provide that. As I say in the book, the recipes are ripe for interpretation. If one wants to add some meat, or dairy, or milk to any of the recipes, I invite people to be creative and re-mix, and rework the recipes so that they work for the person cooking them.
What was the inspiration for the cookbook? Did you just wake up one day and say, "I want to do this!" or was there a particular path to it?
I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, and both sets of my grandparents came from rural Mississippi. I spent a lot of time with them when I was growing up. My parents were working, and they had a lot of agrarian knowledge. Both sets of my grandparents had backyard gardens. My paternal grandfather, his was practically an urban farm. It took up all the available space in the backyard. He grew all types of vegetables, and he had fruit trees, and he also raised chickens. I grew up very close to the earth and learned about gardening and farming from my family.
I think what has upset me over the past several years, just doing this work and thinking more about public health issues, especially the way in which health, food and agricultural issues relate to African-Americans, is the way that African-American cuisine has been vilified in the popular media by a lot of public health officials, physicians and the like.
I think when most people talk about African-American cuisine, they talk about it very narrowly. They are most often imagining the comfort foods: the fried chicken, deep-fried meats, overcooked vegetables, and sweet desserts. Those are part of African-American cuisine, and I certainly have enjoyed them, and still enjoy them occasionally, but as the food historian and cookbook author, Jessica B. Harris, often says, "African-American cuisine is simply what black folks ate."
When I think about what my grandparents ate, and what their parents ate, they ate food that was as fresh as being harvested that day, as local as their backyard garden, and as seasonal as whatever was in season. It was very simple, nutrient-dense, leafy greens, root vegetables, and fresh fruit from the trees in their front yards, and nuts from
