A Conversation with Bryant Terry

Lizzetta LeFalle-Collins: I told you about my background with food and eating and gardening and growing up in LA. The gardening led me into foodways and thinking about organic farming and supporting efforts in sustaining healthy and vibrant communities—the kind that I knew when I was younger, so that’s why I wanted to speak with you. On ODCAP this June 2008 we are considering what artists, artisans or and other creative people like yourself are involved in--efforts to help to improve the quality of lives of people in becoming conscious to what we put in our mouths, our bodies, and the environment around us and how our footprint impacts our personal space, our community space and just how it affects the world. What small steps can we can take to lessen that footprint?

Bryant Terry: That’s a lot--I’m just trying to think of what I can grab out of that and flow. I’ll just start by saying that one of the primary roles that I see my work playing in this movement is helping people remember. Helping us recall that less than two generations ago a lot of African Americans were eating in the ways that advocates of sustainable eating are now saying that we should all embrace.

I’m think a lot about my grandparents, who were from rural Mississippi and migrated to Memphis, TN in their teens. When they relocated to an urban center they brought with them many of the mores, foodways, and traditions of connecting with the natural environment that they had from their rural upbringing. When I was growing up I was very connected to agriculture through their “natural” gardens, as they used to say. They were very clear that they didn’t want to spray poison on their food, and much of the food that we ate was as local as our backyards, as seasonal as whatever was growing, and as fresh as being picked that day. Many of their neighbors had backyard gardens too. People had peach trees, pear trees, and plum trees, practically mini-orchards in their front and back yards. When I go back to those same neighborhoods now they look like shell of themselves. I don’t see any gardens or fruit trees.

LLC: Yes, right.

BT: Obviously there are some complex historical, economic and social reasons why people in those neighborhoods aren’t growing any of their own food. I understand that. But we have to remember that this is our legacy. African Americans, many immigrants, indigenous people often feel disconnected and separate from that legacy. So that’s why history and memory drives much of my writing and work around these issues.

LLC: Yes and that’s why, I feel the same way. I think a lot of people don’t realize and I think a lot of Black Americans in particular don’t realize that their grandparents did this—I’ve tried to get people to think about memory and how things use to be.

We say that there is this memory, there is this history, but what if people say I’m too busy, I’m too tired and I want to purchase local things but the cheaper stuff comes from say, Chile. What do you say to them?

BT: One thing that I am very clear needs to happen in order to create more access to healthy, sustainable, culturally appropriate, and affordable food in communities of color is the creation of locally driven, locally owned community-based food systems. I would argue that there are very strong institutions that exist in our communities now that can take the lead in this, especially faith-based institutions. Not to say that the church has not played an important role in our communities. It has, but when we think about some of the basic core needs of people I feel that many of the faith-based institutions are remiss, particularly around food.

Churches have people, financial capital, and many of them have access to land. When we think of that land as spaces for creating urban farms, community gardens and incubator projects where people can actually learn to garden, grow food, and produce value-added products, the role of the church becomes much more relevant. We have to take control over growing and producing food for our folks.

LLC: Is there here or another area in this country or outside of the country a model that is working, but especially within African/Black diasporas? Is there any community that has embraced this idea?

BT: Well I know that some faith-based institutions are discussing the role of faith in ecological and agricultural issues. There is a Lutheran Church in Chicago that created a curriculum called “Just Eating” that uses the language and principles of the Bible to talk about environmental and food justice.

I’m working with a professor to implement a model in Bay View Hunter’s Point [San Francisco] at a church—working with them to create an urban farm and educating them about health, food, and farming issues.

LLC: Yes, because so many churches and faith-based institution have food give-aways to the homeless and other low-income residents but their give-aways are [often] the cast-offs from these large bakeries.

BT: A lot of that stuff is processed, and the reality is that there are a lot of people who are living in crisis situations that just need to have their bellies filled. I understand that. But I also know that if we’re talking about creating vibrant healthy communities we have to go beyond just having health fairs and screenings and diagnosing illnesses. We know that our communities are suffering from diet-related illnesses at some of the highest rates in the nation. We have to also start bringing more healthy food to our people to prevent these illnesses. We can’t just continue to take medicine and address the symptoms.

LLC: I know, I think of so many [efforts] like the health fairs, where people think okay, we’ve done our good deed for the community today, we volunteered--but you’re saying that it’s about doing more.

Another problem is that a whole culture has been created around people who go to the lower-end restaurants that serve the stuff that comes out of bags and cans, and fast food restaurants are such a cheap option for many families and children who eat independently.

BT: I was on the fast food industrial treadmill when I was in high school and ate too much of that stuff. I know it is cheap in addition to tasting good, smelling good, and it making one feel good (when you’re used to it). I understand the pull factors.

This whole notion of good food being too expensive, is because it is when you shop mostly at conventional supermarkets or corporate “health food” stores. When one has access to farmer’s markets, CSA’s, food coops, food buying clubs, and the like, good food becomes more affordable. Which takes me back to churches in our community playing a role in improving the health of our communities. For example, churches can buy things in bulk, even if it’s just grains, and members can get this food more cheaply than they would at a conventional grocery story or corner stores where the mark up can be 30-100%.

LLC: That’s what I want to talk to you about, this is an art website, contemporary art, but over the years many of my artist’s friends have shared an affinity for gardening and ornamental plants and cooking too. We’ve shared recipes and we’ve shared cooking together. Another thing though, some of them have been involved in sustainable community projects--some revolving around food. [I’m thinking of the artist Mildred Howard when she directed Alice Water’s Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley, CA.] I know that there are now many artists who are looking beyond themselves and to larger global issues that intersect with the environment ,water, and food. So I wanted your voice to be read on this site to perhaps encourage collaborations with artists.

I realize that feeding our families is complex as the dollars dwindle and we have less time but there are little steps I think that you promote which is why I wanted to make a space for your work on OD-CAP.

BT: I approach my work as activist and an artist. I’m very clear about the change that I want to see in the world but I am always thinking about ways I can bring aesthetic pleasure into the food revolution. So I’m not only writing about these issues, but I’m also using art and culture to effect change.

LLC: Yes, it’s always been but in this art historical paradigm there’s this need to separate things into these neat little boxes. Even when I told someone that I was going to have a conversation with you and they said “for OD-CAP, why”—they didn’t see the connection and I do. I don’t like to put these boxes around creative expressions because I believe that one bleeds into the other one and one is just as valid and has just as much value as the next.

BT: I can’t get too caught up in that, because I’m really about the work and making art. Many of my closest friends are fine artists, if you will, and they influence me and excite me more than chefs. I went to culinary school, and I have mentors who are chefs, but the way I approach this work is very interdisciplinary drawing from a number of mediums. There are tons of chefs who have great ideas and who cook well. And there are lots of cookbook authors out there. But one thing that I wanted to do was create a distinct identity for my work by providing soundtracks, including beautiful images, blending history and memory. But what it all boils down to is the food. I can talk and write about these issues all day, but making a delicious meal from local, seasonal, organic ingredients has moved more people to think about their consumption patterns then any of that other stuff.

LLC: Right. Yes and I notice you have a photograph of one of Hank Willis Thomas’s works.

BT: Yes.

LLC: Who really deals with branding and the marketplace and how it actually tells you what you like and what you need and all of that.

BT: I love that piece. It is called “How to Market Kitty Litter to Black people,” which is part of his unbranded series, where he takes corporate advertisements and strips them of their text so that the viewer can interpret the image and come to his or her own conclusions. Because watermelon has historically been associated with very negative racial stereotypes of African Americans, I was very careful and deliberate about avoiding doing things that played into existing racial stereotypes because I went to predominately white schools all my life. So for the longest, I didn’t eat watermelon or fried chicken or anything that I thought played into racial stereotypes.

LLC: Yes.

BT: …And now I eat watermelon all the time with a big grin on my face--I love it.

LLC: Yes, it’s the national fruit of Mexico. Where did you go to school?

BT: Undergraduate or graduate?

LLC: Yes, both.

BT: I got my BA in English from Xavier University of Louisiana and my MA in American History from NYU [New York University, New York City] and I went to The Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts.

LLC: So at what point did food come into your writing, your studying, your thinking, your consciousness—at what point did you say, aha, I want to make this connection between memory and eating, southern school or northern school?

BT: I always say that the foundation of the work that I’m doing started in Memphis with my grandparents and everything that they gave me. But when I was in graduate school I was doing some research on social movements, particularly on liberation movements in the late 1960s and the 70s. I was looking at the Black Panther and their “Survival Programs” and the two that stood out for me were their “free breakfast for children” and “grocery give-aways.”

As I did more research, it really struck me that in the late 1960s they had this brilliant analysis around the intersection of poverty, malnutrition and institutional racism. They wanted to liberate Black communities, and they knew that providing food for young people was key.

So when I left graduate school, I started doing work with small community-based organizations in New York that provided services to low-income communities. Many of the organizations were addressing youth leadership and youth development but weren’t addressing something as basic as what young people were putting in their bodies. I saw that there was a lack of information about diet and health in many of these communities, but there was the bigger issue of lack of access to healthy food.

There was a dearth of sources for getting fresh food, and obviously there was a plethora of the worst foods—fast food, fried fatty foods, corner stores, bodegas that had lots of low-nutrient, high-calorie foods—so that’s what people were eating.

I decided to go to Culinary School at the Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts in New York City, and I founded a not-for-profit in New York, b-healthy, that worked with low-income young people using food and cooking as a way to engage them around these more political issues of food.

LLC: Is the not-for-profit still there?

BT: We operated for five years and then disbanded the organization. The cool thing is that all of the program coordinators have gone on to do their own projects dealing with food, so I like to say that b- healthy is living on and continuing through our current work.

LLC: I was reading recently about the smaller organic farmers and some have had to roll back on some of the organic tools because it has become too expensive for them [to operate] and if they keep raising the price of their produce, it won’t be affordable [to the consumer]. Have you heard anything about this?

BT: I know that one of the biggest issues is the rising global cost of food but I just don’t have a real sense of its intricacies because I’ve been so involved in writing my book.

LLC: I know that Black farmers have been squeezed and now other smaller farmers are squeezed also.

Let's move onto slow food and that philosophy. I remember slow food, big pots of stuff just simmering on the stove—a big cast iron Dutch oven pot. In reading about the slow food movement and I said slow food as opposed to fast? Yet, I remember slow food from my childhood and the preparation--you know preparing it slowly--taking your time. When I was in France this fall the brakes for lunch were for 2-2 1/2 hours. But mid-day after church suppers used to be like that. Plus, it seemed to be so much food to share, enjoying it with everybody that came by. Your comments on the slow food movement….

BT: Yeah, it’s funny the whole slow food movement was started by Patrini in Italy, but I first started thinking about slow food in the sense that most people think about it when I was studying in France as an undergraduate. My host family would have these very long drawn out lunches and suppers and they really provided a space for folks to enjoy the food and company. Obviously folks other than Europeans have slow food traditions, they just look different.

We all should look back to our cultures slow food traditions and re-emphasize the importance of sharing food with our families and communities, connecting, building, and using food as a centerpiece for that. That’s why when I wrote my first book Grub, my co-author and I started Grub parties, which was our way of infusing community into the conversation around sustainable food. We would get the food from local farms, food coops, the farmer’s markets, and build community, non-didactically showing and not just telling.

LLC: By example….

BT: Yeah and people would be, like wow, I haven’t had a pizza like this in years and it would be because the ingredients were fresh and grown 50 miles away. The aesthetic pleasures of the food helped open people up to a different way of thinking about connecting.

I always have to emphasis the fact that having a personal transformation and making individual changes is a start, but there are larger structural issues that prohibit people from eating and living healthfully, and we have to address them. We have to hold our elected officials accountable and insure that they are pushing for policies that insure that small farmers can be supported that most of our tax dollars are not going toward subsidies for agri-corporations. Our tax dollars have to go into urban communities and support projects that would make food less expensive for low-income people. We have to vote with our fork as consumers because every dollar that we spend is going to determine how the market shifts. But really we have to vote and say to our local, state and national officials that we need policies that are going to insure that everyone has access to healthy, affordable, local food.

LLC: I want to refer to OD-CAP and our support of sustainable communities through the arts. Have you ever collaborated with an artist on a project?

BT: I always collaborate with other artists. When Anna Lappé and I started working on Grub back in 2004 one of the first things I did was ask my friend Yamini Nayar, who is a photographer based in New York City, to provide some images for our website. She provided some beautiful images that reflected on food, it’s place in the urban environment, the disconnection between rural and urban, and the like. I wanted to include art in Grub that would visually represent the four seasons so that people could be reminded about eating in season. So my friend Tenjin Ikeda provided four beautiful woodcuts. I had different people provide soundtracks for the menus in my first book. And for my next book my uncle Don Bryant, who is a songwriter, is going to be contributing a song-prayer for the opening of the book so that people can reflect on the need to give gratitude for our food. So yeah, collaborating with other artists is a priority of mine.

LLC: There are artists, Black artists who are dealing with social justice; ecological health, food production and also I’d like to think that there are opportunities for future collaborations between artists from different disciplines. I think so many [of them] would benefit from working with you. Often communities see artists as someone apart from their experience and visual plastic artists are often guilty of keeping their distance. At one time artists were more involved in their communities, with the people they lived around--and then it became cool to disconnect. I do want to work toward a visual literacy in communities and helping artists to become more active members of the places where they call home. It doesn’t have to be something organized but just a consciousness of what’s happening in their own backyards and how their work might intersect with what someone else is doing--how these artists may be able to work together as artists and work with folks who have no formal training in art but have something to say.

BT: A good friend of mine, painter Brett Cook-Dizney, and I have talked about doing a community project. He’s very conscious of having community-oriented art and working in spaces and places where he is situated and involving people who are a part of his community. So I’m excited to see what we can come up with.

LCC: Is there anything else you’d like to add or say about what you’re involved in or your wish list of what you want to become involved in.

BT: I just want to continue creating; that’s it. What that looks like is obviously going to shift as I grow, so we’ll see what happens in the next few years. I’m very open to collaborations. They really allow me the room to do more things when I don’t have to hold one project alone on my shoulders.

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