For years, my first kitchen story was crowded out. I walled my grandmother in behind an emotional fortress that left me feeling inadequate and insecure. And I struggled against these images of food and cooking that had been stereotyped and weaponized to distract and discourage me from my fulfilling purpose. Aunt Jemima, especially in her original design, was created to convey two messages. She told consumers that black women created high-quality food, and that the mixes and syrups she hawked could therefore be trusted to be high-quality products. But she also told women like me that, even in freedom, we were still confined to work in the kitchen. She kept us in our place.
After my father was killed in Los Angeles in 1995, I began studying black food history. In time, values like proficiency, self-discipline, resourcefulness, creativity, leadership, resistance, self-empowerment, integrity, resilience, compassion, confidence and the pursuit of excellence revealed themselves in black cooks’ stories. Like garlands of grace, these new truths — Jemima clues, I called them — ended the tyranny of the stereotype. The spell broke. Black cooks became role models who taught ways the kitchen can redeem and restore.
Their lessons became my first book, “The Jemima Code: Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks.” In sharing their work, I was able to take back the caricature and break my personal Jemima code. I discovered kindred spirits and tuned out negative and defeating thoughts that had obscured these women’s true worth. By respecting and honoring their legacy, I transformed from self-conscious to confident and hopeful.
I thank God for the cooks in “The Jemima Code,” and those in my cookbook, “Jubilee: Recipes From Two Centuries of African American Cooking.” Especially now, in the midst of civil unrest, unrelenting oppression, police brutality, economic inequity, a pandemic and so much more, their recipes feel like prophecy — whispering life lessons and liberating truths I had been listening for my entire life.
These black women, many of whom I have never met, have nurtured me through traumatic experiences the way black women have helped one another overcome assaults of every kind for generations — from the sexual abuse and other horrors of enslavement to the lynchings and police brutality that still kill our family members today. You could say that when I lost my earthly father, my Heavenly Father sent guardian angels to lead the way out of hopelessness to healing. My forthcoming memoir, “Come On In My Kitchens: The Hope of Jemima,” is a love letter to them.
In these tumultuous times, I believe a little curiosity can light a pathway to freedom for us all. When we reflect on our true heritage, celebrate individual black lives beyond the plantation story and empathetically put aside the long-held beliefs and prejudices that were designed to divide us, we can reclaim our values and enact radical hospitality that offers more than just entertainment. Retiring Jemima is a good first step, but it is just that: a step. We need scholarships for black culinary students. We need support for black-owned restaurants and food businesses. We need more black journalists who can do the essential work of unearthing the stories behind these harmful images and translating the scholarship around them into the mainstream, so that the greater public understands the wisdom and knowledge that these tropes have erased. Freedom is a seat at the table for real African-Americans, not stereotypes — a fellowship that spurs increased economic opportunities and better community health.