This week's newsletter is the first in a three-part series by Jasmine Michel, a farm-to-table chef and writer who dedicates her work to the marginalized. An alumni of The French Culinary Institute and the Eco Practicum School of Ecological Justice, Jasmine's newest project, Dreamboat Cafe, is a small food platform of pop-up dinners and underground food journalism rooted in the effects of societal stigma and standards on minority mental health and liberation.

LAST WINTER ...

seemed to serve us with the harshest of reality checks. Collectively we fell apart and away from the statue of societal structure. We were met with a version of ourselves untouched by traditional work schedules, community connection, and solitude. Though liberating, it left many dismantled. Some of us started to question where exactly we were before our lives became exploited in order to survive. Before governance, how did we survive? Where do we come from and what is happening to those places now?  If not because of the chaos in the world, the chaos within myself sang as harsh as winter to be evolved in primordial ways, discovering where we left off before the destruction of colonialism.
 

Along with this frenzied breath upon us trying desperately to get things back to 'normal', we witnessed just how unequal the disbursements of rights in a system that’s been running our lives have become. How can we trust a system that, when halted, reveals the reliance it has on colonized people in order to keep going, a society built to make you fail your own psychology. How does that happen? What do we actually have that’s sustainable? What have we to come back to?

I sat with winter, listening and observing as much as I could while the trees fell silent in their own sleep and it was much like finding my way back home. My mom was born and raised in Guyana - our family immigrated there from Uttar Pradesh, India, generations prior to hers. Guyana was formally colonized by the British up until 1966. It is the only South American country with English as an official language. It’s also home to Indian, African, Chinese, and Portuguese immigrants, in addition to nine different Indigenous tribes. My dad on the other hand was born and raised in Haiti. His family, who most likely originated from Nigeria, was taken as slaves and given the last name of their slave owner as identification, the name that we still bear today. 

I have yet to voyage to my homelands and with that brings a lot of questioning. I scattered out thoughts on what exactly it would take to travel there now, then rang my mom and asked her. Ecstatic for wanting to see one of the two ‘homes’ my family is from, my mom agreed to planning a trip with the innate desire still left in her to be near the market, the village, and rainforest.  

The education I learned about Guyana has been passed down by the whispers of aunties and uncles - never a textbook or website, but from the stories of sugar cane plantations and Chinese vegetables. On the internet I was offered articles characterizing it as the “New Costa Rica”, a jungle paradise ripe and ready for modern ownership. When looking for potential places to work-trade I was met with the same experience I've been having while work-trading on Native land: White landowners. I realized there is maligned protection that follows western standards on Native land, one that fails to provide the same preservation for the land's Native people. Modern technologies and systems such as agro-tourism have made it so that second and third world countries increase and sustain their fiscal stability in what is notoriously rooted in the colonization and exploitation of BIPOC cultures and land. It feels like a submission to Euro/western standards on a systemic level in order to survive. 

It was a floodgate that opened when I finally understood why it’s been made so hard to discover our origin through travel and exploration to our homelands. It was expressed to be a death sentence for a dark woman to travel alone. But half of my White friends lived in Africa, backpacked in India, and spent summers in Haiti. I was taught that I will always be in some percentage of danger simply because I am not in the same percentage of protection as my White/cisgendered counterparts are.... those percentages coming from a system I work for.

The fire I stoked throughout winter held the girth of my processing. What does it mean, to continuously witness the safeness of being White/cis gendered while traveling on Native land? With the lack of protection and preservation of that land and its people? Is it possible to use the safeness of being White to actually protect and preserve all that isn’t safe? Or do we dismantle what created that cycle? Do we defund it? Reform it? Or do we give up our few rights for full sovereignty of self? 

In the next installment of this series on systemic safety that follows Western standards in agro-tourism, Jasmine will be back next week to investigate a broader articulation on modern colonization, featuring an interview with Durham native, Marcella Camara of ‘Young, Gifted and Broke’ a pop-up art show and creative consultancy giving space to creatives of color.

. . .

We are thrilled and grateful to have collaborated with Jasmine through the Share Your Voice initiative, an ongoing effort inspired by the #sharethemicnow movement. For more from Jasmine on the GFJ platform, check out these past instagram posts.

In food, justice, and food justice,

Tay + Dor

photo by Jasmine Michel

tidbits...

resources on anti-racism, environmentalism and food culture AKA stuff we're reading / listening to / watching / noticing / thinking about / captivated by this Tuesday . . .

You can contribute to Jasmine's Dreamboat Cafe, a multidisciplinary small food business dedicated to community popups and food journalism in themes of social fairness, mental health, and heritage, right here.

If you're looking for a new read, check out Mayukh Sen's soon-to-be-released, Tastemakers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America.

Welcome to Mental Health Mondays. The James Beard Foundation and Not 9 to 5 team up one Monday per month to lead a mental health check in for hospitality professionals. This month's falls on November 15th. 

While we'd like to think there has been progress since this article, Why We Can't Talk About Race in Food was published in 2017, we think it's worthy of a re-read to digest and continue to push the conversation forward. 

This week, we're remembering the life and work of Jerry Pinkney (NYTimes), whose picture books are treasures for any age, and a great addition to any gift-giving you plan to do this season.

In case you missed it: Download and share the new PDF version of our guide to How to Write a More Equitable Job Post, previously available only on instagram.

Read the latest GFJ Story on Avery Cramer and the Co-Harvest Foundation, turning San Diego yards into vegetable plots capable of feeding scores of households and senior citizens living on fixed incomes.

got a tidbit? drop it here for us and we'll share it in next week's newsletter.