Reclaiming Generational & Collective Memory
a radical monthly syllabus for cookbook club
“I believe food is the vehicle for which we carry our most intimate experiences, our most vulnerable truths, the sensorial map of our history. The reason why we seed rows of corn in our hair on the journey to lose oneself. Food holds the taste, the memory of who you are and where you come from. You can lose your home, you can lose your photographic evidence, you can lose your land, but what you cannot lose is the embedded genetic seed of cultural memory held in the seeds of ancient grains that continue to speak of ancient stories, food speaks. Like a tree that bears the fruit of knowledge, the knowledge of knowing one’s self. To be firmly rooted, grounded. And when we lose ourselves, we can sow seeds of collective memory when we break familiar bread. When we plant again in home, the practice of knowing exactly who you are–restoring the practice of sowing and reaping, we can find ourselves home.”
Reclaiming Generational & Collective Memory
Welcome home. This month I invite you to retreat back into the sensorial landscape of home. I want to invite you to explore with me what it means, what it looks like to engage with and be washed over, baptized by the generational and collective memories of ancestral knowledge and history. Many of us, are like myself, and we do not have the privilege of scanning through archives, being able to name and retell the history of relatives long passed, but what we do have is the seeds of history tucked into the communion we engage in on Sundays. In the intuitive knowledge stored in these bones. I also believe that we have a responsibility to ourselves, to those who will come after us, to explore that knowledge, to become aware of it, in unison with it, to live with it in all its glory and all its pain. To engage in the real war on terror, the real threat to homeland security, the battle against erasure. The real terrorist here is when we forget the act of remembering. They are not our biggest threat, we are. Man cannot erase what the soul can remember. But if we have no praxis of memory, when we choose to remain apolitical to the threats of our culture, when we do not discover old tools in new settings, then we chart a path to erasure, a certain and final death.
“Man cannot erase what the soul can remember.”
I cannot say where this month will lead us, nor the ways that it will challenge us, but it is my prayer that it does. I pray that it challenges our beliefs, causes us to examine what we believe and to be willing to confront what we do not. Not to engage in battle, but to surrender to love, to lead with compassion. My only goal is for us to begin to identify what a praxis of memory looks like, what tools will we employ, how will we write manifestos of healing and scrutiny? I am clear that this will take time. And I know that you are committed to the cause of liberation. The war against erasure, I know that you want to be remembered.
Monthly Syllabus
To help guide us and serve as a co-pilot for our exploring this month, I’ve curated a syllabus. If you have not already, consider joining us in our RADICAL AF Cookbook Club, where we dive in together to explore these themes through monthly readings, discussions, workshops and classes, where you can find the complete monthly syllabus. For now we’re going to go into what the syllabus includes.
This month’s syllabus includes a more detailed overview of this month’s theme: Reclaiming Generational and Collective Memory, as well as reflective prompts to consider as we work our way through text, sensorial experiences to try as we practice the praxis of memory, my personal footnotes, and of course our complete reading list which includes my suggested further reading.
This Months Flow: Setting Expectations
If you will be joining us in the RADICAL AF Cookbook Club, then you can expect a full detailed email explaining the flow for this month, when we will be meeting as a community, what we will be discussing and pondering on and offline, and the syllabus.
For those of you not yet joining us in the RADICAL AF Cookbook Club, you can expect to meet me here weekly through the newsletter where I will be sharing as I work my way through this month’s syllabus. I will share through various different mediums my attempts, my thoughts, the way I am experiencing this month’s theme. Through my own perspective you will also have the opportunity to do some solo exploration alongside me. Again, if you get lonely, you always have an invitation to community.
A Writing Prompt
This week I want to leave us with a writing prompt, that is actually on the syllabus for this month.
In what ways has my body remembered what my mind has forgotten and vice versa?
Happy Writing, Happy Exploring!
-Kai
In what ways has my body remembered what my mind has forgotten and vice versa? I love this question. I often forget how good food actually is, like the taste. Chemo has stripped it from me. But my mind won’t forget. Won’t forget when Kai first seen me when I told her about my cancer, I won’t forget the chocolate chip cookies she made me. Won’t forget how those cookies tasted like life again.