ENODI Inteview: Jodi Dubin, Ph.D.
--
Always an outsider — not from this place
Birthplace: Bermuda
Parents’ Nationality: Jamaican mother, Grenadian father
Country Raised: The United States
Origin Story
Michael Rain: Who are you and where are you from?
Jody Dublin: I’m Jody Dublin. I was born in Bermuda, but my parents are Jamaican and Grenadian. My mom is Jamaican and my dad is Grenadian. I came to the United States in 1990 when I was almost 5. So I’m technically what they call a 1.5 generation, which means you came to your new country before you turned nine years old. So I always feel like a foreigner. All the time. Like I always feel like an immigrant no matter what culture I’m in, basically.
MJR: Really?
JD: Yes. Because my parents are not from the same place I was born. And I am not from the place that I live now. And my parents are not from this place either. And I am not from the places that they are from, so I just always feel like I don’t know whats going on.
MJR: Somewhere on the outside like the Mariah Carey song.
(laughter)
JD: Yes. Exactly.
As An Outsider
MJR: Oh wow, okay. So well how is that? Well first, what does.. What does that mean “always an outsider or not from this place?” What does that mean to you?
JD: They’re just traditions that I don’t understand from all sides. So for example, my mom recently passed away and she was Jamaican. I’m an only child also. I’m an only child and only my mom and I came over to this country. So when I was growing up it was basically just my mom and I and like no one else in this country. So if I wanted to see family–like sometimes they would come over or I would go over there, but at a certain point, you know, you get older, you want to do things in the summer, whatever. So I kind of stopped going over. I’d only been to Grenada twice. I’ve been to Jamaica a few times, but the last time I went was in 1995.
MJR: Wow.
JD: Yes. So, I definitely feel very disconnected from the culture. And when we were making the funeral preparations it was really clear that I didn’t understand either culture when it came to this specific ceremony. These specific processes and you know, the ins and outs and the rules and stuff like that. I didn’t understand that either side because I’d never gone through it. And also like even I’d never attended a funeral in Jamaica and attended a few and here in the United States, but my family was, you know, kinda criticizing me because I didn’t know what I was doing basically.
MJR: Right
JD: So it comes up in, in sort of things like that. And it’s kind of like a tease to live here in a way. Because like in the United States, because I’m surrounded by Americans and they’re living their American life, but I have to still kind of abide by my West Indian cultures and traditions and things like that.
MJR: And how do they differ? In ways that frustrate you, because that’s a broad question.
JD: Yeah. So for example, when it comes to dealing with my parents. I’m in my thirties, whatever. So for mostly everybody, once you leave home it’s like done and you don’t have any responsibility to your family or anything like that. But ever since I left home I always had a responsibility to my family too. To my mom who was disabled. So I always felt like I had to provide financially. So when I went to college I got scholarships and all that stuff and when I would get extra money I would send it to her. So, um, you know..
MJR: I identify with that, yeah definitely.
JD: So I would be broke, you know, but she, I would give her money or you know, whatever. So that was providing financially has always been part of my relationship with my mom. At least my dad is a different story, but I’m paying my mom’s bills or like whatever. And I didn’t see my American friends like doing that thing in the same way. I’m also, there was an expectation of me to take care of my mom. Being a woman, you know, being the daughter, that was definitely something that was expected of me even though when I–It just wasn’t feasible. It just wasn’t feasible for me to do it. And I tried. I moved down to Florida to help her. That was, you know, where she was. But I just couldn’t make a life like that
MJR: Especially as an only child that’s definitely a large demand.
JD: Yeah. It’s a lot of pressure. But I’m the only, only child and my family. So like everyone else has at least, you know, one of my aunts has three sons, the other one is five daughters. Like everybody has multiple kids. So nobody understood the kind of pressures that are placed on you when you only have–when there’s just you and there’s nobody else.
MJR: Right.
JD: So it was, it’s when I think about my family, like my extended family, like it’s definitely very. I definitely feel very isolated and a lot of different ways. So there’s… I feel connected to my West Indian heritage. But I also don’t at the same time, like I feel like I grew up with my Jamaican mom and so like I understand certain things, but there’s so much of the culture that, that I just don’t get.
MJR: And that, and you realized that at the funeral?
JD: I realized it throughout my life, definitely. Like even moving here to Brooklyn and meeting other West Indians and being like, “oh, y’all do things a little bit differently than I do.”
MJR: Yeah.
JD: And like what does that mean? And you know, I understand Patwah. I don’t speak it very well, but I understand. But just different cultural things like that. I definitely saw the difference between like how I grew up and how they’ve grown up. And people in Jamaica or Grenada have grown up.
Childhood and Growing Up
MJR: Interesting. So did you go to school with a lot of kids who were also immigrants or was it mostly American born folks that you were growing up with or hanging around?
JD: So, my neighborhood changed a lot as I grew up. When I first got there in 1990, I would say there were a lot of white people there. It was mostly white people. And then like a small Hispanic community or Caribbean Community, I’ll say. A lot of Puerto Ricans and then some people from the West Indies. But mostly like white and then like 12 percent black people. Not a lot of black people. I went to a Lutheran School for elementary school and that was very white. I was the only person basically for like the whole time. Middle school was Catholic school. There were a few more black people there. But, yeah, I would say that was in the graduating class. There were like a few Asian people, a few Latinix folks and then two, me and another girl named Jody.
MJR: Oh! (laughter)
JD: Oh, well, well Jody is like Jamaicanist name for like 1980, like the 1980’s. It’s Super Jamaican.
MJR: Oh word?
JD: Yes. So anyway that was middle school and then high school was again back to about 12 percent black and then about 50 percent Latinix and then maybe like 25 percent white and then the rest Asian.
MJR: Oh Wow.
JD: So I didn’t, I guess I did grow up around a good amount of… it felt like a lot of Caribbean people because of my mom and like when we came over, like her friends had come over and stuff like that. So it felt like a lot, but it really wasn’t like what I look at my statistics for my high school, it was like, there were not a lot of us there. So, um, and when I say black, I mean like Afro-Caribbean, there weren’t a lot of African Americans where I grew up. It wasn’t until I came here really that I started meeting more African-Americans.
MJR: Here in New York?
JD: When I went to college, that’s when I met more African-Americans and then like grad school and stuff and New York even more. Yeah.
Anti African-American Sentiment, Blackness and African Diaspora Issues
MJR: So. All right. So, did you identify as a black growing up? Like was that an identity you thought of? Embraced felt defined by?
JD: Yeah, because like there was no escaping it. Like I was the only black person and, but I didn’t think of myself as, or I didn’t align myself with African Americans. Like I always still saw myself as separate. And I’m still like undoing a lot of the anti-African American sentiment that my family and my friends and stuff–well, my family friends when I was growing up indoctrinated me with. That’s another podcast for another time.
MJR: Oh, we’re not gonna talk about that?
JD: Anti-African American sentiment?
MJR: Well, I feel like it has to do with how you think of what black is, right? You’re like, it’s mixed in there somehow.
JD: There’s black in this country. Yeah. But black in the world. No.
MJR: Okay.
JD: I would say that my mom or my family always kind of for like there’s us and there’s them and like they’re lazy. You know, they’re always in trouble, you know, stuff like that. And we’re not like that. We are different. And it wasn’t until I was older that I started to really understand how harmful that was. And then honestly, no one cared. Like maybe other black people cared like what my ethnicity was, but like white people didn’t. No one cared if I was walking down the street, no one would be like, “oh wait, don’t harass her. Like she’s Jamaican-Grenadian-Bermudian. She’s one of the good ones.” No one cares, no one cares. So I’m a black girl and I like, that’s how I identify. And I always have, I’ve always just been black.
MJR: So then, I mean, I know this is a difficult question, but like how would you define what being black is? Like, what does that mean? When you said that “I’m a black girl.”
JD: Like I would say like having that connection to Africa, whether it’s through the Transatlantic slave trade or not. Um, yeah, that’s, that’s what I think it was black. It wasn’t like, yeah, because wherever I’ve gone in the world that I’ve seen other black people, I’m like, “these are my people.” So Colombia, Brazil, you know, wherever I’ve gone and seen black people I’m like that’s us, that’s me. I never felt like that’s them over there. They’re speaking another language. I’m like, no, that’s us.
MJR: Yeah. I dig it. I feel the same way? So then how do you like… So what’s your relationship with black Americans now? How does that work when it comes to issues that are uniquely being black in America versus black or maybe issues of immigration that they don’t quite… I don’t want to use the word understand, but they see differently than you do because you’re an immigrant and they’re not, but you are both black in America. How does that juggle for you?
JD: Well, I definitely see myself as allied in the struggle, like I’m black and again, one of the things that if you’re looking at research, which I do because I study immigrants. Um, a lot of times with one point five generation people, especially black immigrants, they are more likely to see themselves as like African American than say someone who came over when they were older, 15 or 16 or 20 or 40 or whatever. Um, because like I said, it doesn’t matter if I’m walking down the street and a cop stops me, there’s not going to ask me what my… they’re not going to ask for my 23andMe like no one cares.
MJR: Yeah (laughter)
JD: And I see also, although the different ethnicities face different struggles like we are all… anti-blackness is global.
MJR: Yes.
JD: And so like, I don’t feel like I, I’m definitely aligned with African Americans. It took me learning more about African American history and understanding the systems of oppression that African Americans have dealt with that um, that Caribbean people and African people and you know, South American and whatever, that we haven’t had to deal with.
To really understand why a lot of African Americans are the position that they’re in terms of, um, discrepancies in wealth and stuff like that. It was always like, “well, look around, all of us Jamaicans are so successful, the West Indians are so successful, Africans are so successful” and we don’t ever stop and think like… like what are the things that happened for us to get successful? Like we don’t think about the fact that to even get a visa to come to this country, we have to do, you know, uh, be adventurous and enterprising and have money and social capital and stuff like that.
So we’re already skimming from the top. And then like, you know, etc. Etc. Etc. So it took me like the learning more about my own privilege to understand like, okay, that’s my privilege. And again, like no one cares what I am or whatever. We’re all black. Um, so I just see myself as black. I see myself as allied with the black situation. I wouldn’t call myself African American because my ethnicity is different. Um, but I don’t. And even that I feel like a little tension about.
MJR: That term?
JD: Yeah. Yeah. Because I feel like I don’t want to other myself, but it’s different. It’s just different. And so like whatever. I wouldn’t get offended if someone was like, oh, she’s African American, but that’s not my heritage.
MJR: Right. Yeah. I mean I don’t… the term African American is complex because like, I’m literally African American, right? And not, but not in the way that the term was created for. So I normally say black American, black Americans are Americans, but they’re black.
JD: Yeah.
JR: But, um, people avoid that term black even globally, what do you call us? Black or negroes or from the African diaspora or whatever. It’s so… It’s all over the place. I don’t know.
JD: I love black. I like it because it’s like a catchall.
MJR: Yeah, me too.
JD: It’s you know, whether you’re from the continent or even if you’re from the continent, everybody from the continent is black.
MJR: That’s right. That is right.
JD: So it tells you, if I tell you I’m black, you know what to look for.
MJR: Right (laughter) the best. Uh, so far the best definition or guide that, I’ve been given was if the person needs lotion, right? If you need lotion and don’t get ashy (laughter). I’m like “Is that true?”
JD: I’m like, I’ve seen a lot of these colonizers out here need lotion. So I would say that that is not a good one. I went to Brazil to do like a little studying about their affirmative action quota systems and there’s one organization that works with black Brazilian youth to get them ready to go to college because they have to take this entrance exam thing. So there’s this whole thing in Brazil where it’s like, “oh, everybody’s mixed. Everything is great. There’s no racism, whatever.”
MJR: Melting pot stuff?
JD: Yeah. Racial democracy, like whatever. So one of the people in this program was like, “um, you want to know how you can know if someone is black, ask the police” and that really stuck with me because they know. They always know.
MJR: That is… I’ve never thought about it that way.
JD: Someone else also said in Brazil “ask the janitor,” and I thought that that was also very poignant, very poignant commentary on racism, and class and stuff like that. So that’s his black. (laughter)
Education, professional life and work
MJR: Alright, well let’s backtrack a bit because I should have asked you this question earlier. What do you do? What is your work? How do you define it? And you do not have to define yourself by actually bothers me when people do this, define themselves by their title and where they work. That tells me something but, what is your work? What do you?
JD: I would say my work is helping people get through college. And maybe even broader like, cause I’m working with or have worked with a student in the past who I honestly think he shouldn’t be in college. Like he has… College is holding him back. He is an independent thinker. He’s done like all these projects and like he in his industry. He’s done so much that going to school is like taking away his time from doing his projects that he wants to do, that Is going to help him move forward and his industry. And um, so I would say like helping people find their purpose, helping people you know, do what they need to do. That’s both the job that I get paid for, but also I find a lot of times people come and talk to me about this privately or whatever.
MJR: Oh, interesting. And did have you that? Well, so I’m gonna make a lot of assumptions here because immigrants in America, black or otherwise had, if you grow up here, your parents are obsessed with education. It is your life. The expectations of you going to college or grad school, whatever. It’s like, not even a question. It’s like, you know what I mean? It’s like you’re eating today, you’re going to school. There’s no question.
JD: That’s it. That’s really it.
MJR: So who did that for you? Or was that your experience?
JD: Yeah. Yeah. I always knew I was going to college because I’m an immigrant.
(laughter)
MJR: That’s right. (laughter)
JD: Um, but again, even that is very classist to say, but I, I come from a certain immigrant family that, that was the message that was passed down to me. I’ve been wanting to go to college since I was like 10 years old. I was obsessed with college. I grew up…
MJR: Pardon A Different World?
JD: Not really. The immigrant thing is complicated because I wasn’t allowed to watch a lot of TV. So a lot of these references that people make and stuff like I miss them. But I’ve watched it back and I wish that I would’ve seen it and I wish that I would’ve known that like an HBCU was a good option for me. Always wanted to go to college. I always loved school. I grew up in Florida, which is a big football place.
MJR: Yeah, definitely.
JD: So even before I understood about like college, I understood football. Even if my parents weren’t directly talking to me about college, I was getting the messages from the culture. But my parents were talking to me about college and doing well and stuff like that. So that was always, I knew going to be my ticket out of my small town, especially because I want to leave as soon as I could.
MJR: And did they influence what you should study or major in like did you fall into the Gina Yashere four like four things you can be.
JD: What’s that?
MJR: A doctor, lawyer, engineer or disgrace to the family? Were those your options?
JD: Oh, yes, yes, yes. I’m a disgrace. (laughter). But I would say for Jamaican women you have two options, nurse or a teacher.
MJR: Yeah. That’s true.
JD: So it’s a little bit different for Jamaican woman, but actually Jamaican men because a lot of the Jamaican men I know now are like in nursing school. My parents indirectly influenced my major. My major was Latin American and Caribbean studies. I was really, really, really interested in Latin America and the Caribbean. I did really well in Spanish in high school. That was my best subject and my favorite subject and I wanted to study it more, but I also wanted to learn more about my heritage and the African diaspora. I’m obsessed with the African diaspora and Africa now that I’ve actually been to Ghana.
MJR: You don’t have to go anywhere else.
JD: I really don’t. I do want to go to Senegal, but I feel like that’s it. Once I go to those two I’ll be, I’ll be fine. I’m just kidding.
MJR: That’s the origin of jollof.
JD: Senegal jollof is just… (make a delicious sound)
MJR: They’re the originator.
JD: It’s really good.
MJR: All the rest of us we’re like remixes. They had the original.
JD: Don’t say that too loud. Nigerians are gonna come for you.
(laughter)
The Caribbean Legacy in American Civil Rights Movement and Famous Caribbean ENODI
JD: So I guess like in a way. And my parents didn’t tell me that much about their countries. I knew a little bit. But my dad, I didn’t grow up with my dad around. He lived in Bermuda and I’ve only been to Grenada a couple of times. So I know I knew barely anything about Grenada. Jamaica, I knew a little bit more because at least I haven’t been there more frequently and I lived with my mom, but I didn’t know a lot about Marcus Garvey like I knew the name but I didn’t know what he was famous for. I knew he was a national hero. I didn’t know anything about like how like impactful, like how he impacted Ghana, like when I found that out, that changed my whole life. I wanted to learn more about that because I felt like I didn’t learn enough at home or in school about my heritage or about the African diaspora.
MJR: Oh, that’s interesting. Now that you say that… I don’t know. I’m, I’m late to the game formally studying the diaspora, right? And like I was on this walking tour, was that last year? Last year in East Harlem. I just thought, okay, I don’t know anything about East Harlem other than the scary intersection of Lexington and 125th. Where the Caribbean Cultural Center is.
JD: That is right. Oh yeah!
MJR: They’ve, they’re the ones who hosted the walking tour. That tour blew my mind because before that had never considered how influential black immigrants have been in like the Black American story, especially with civil rights.
JD: They keep it quiet.
MJR: Yeah. Which is like totally not really acknowledged or thought of
JD: not at all.
MJR: Like huge things.
JD: Almost all of the big… Not Martin Luther King and stuff, but like a lot of the other influential black men and women had a tie to the Caribbean and we just never. We erase all of that.
MJR: Yeah. Like Shirley Chisholm.
JD: Shirley Chisholm was Guyanese. Audre Lorde was Grenadian.
MJR: Oh, I didn’t know that!
JD: Yes! Yes! There’s so many people that we, we just erase. This is why I get angry. Because we totally erase how the Caribbean like radiates out. Like we are only thinking about like Reggae music. But beyond that, we don’t think about how Caribbean islands are influencing other parts of the world. Like we don’t talk about if America’s not involved we’re not interested. If white America is not involved, we’re not interested. We’re not talking Stokely Carmichael and how he was Trinidadian and you know, all of these Civil Rights heroes, like a lot of them had connections to the Caribbean and we’re learning about stuff freakIng Marcus Garvey and stuff like we’ve just never talk about it.
MJR: One, you’re one hundred percent right. And it continues, because Colin Powell…
JD: He’s Jamaican, yeah.
MJR: Eric Holder, too.
JD: He’s from Barbados
MJR: It’s funny because now that I think about it, It would make sense, in a messed up way, but it makes sense that the fIrst “Black” American president would not be Black American.
JD: Yeah…
MJR: In that sense when you understand that history, but even King. On Ghana’s first independence ceremony–this is 1958–And this is before the “I Have a Dream Speech.”He invited him and Corretta to Ghana for that ceremony. And this is a ceremony with the Queen of England. Richard Nixon was there because he was vice president at the time. He was acknowledging King’s power and the connection between both struggles. Even at that ceremony, King told Nixon, to his face, that the independence and freedom that we’re celebrating, this is what we’re fighting for it in our country. This is what needs to happen. So that connection throughout has always been.
JD: But we never taught that. We don’t talk about it.
MJR: We don’t think about it or talk about it collectively as a diaspora. We’re thinking about it in America or in the Caribbean. It’s crazy.
JD: Yeah. We’ve always been working together. We’ve just always been working together in the struggle for independence, stuff like that. We’ve been working together, but that stuff just conveniently gets omitted from history books. We don’t talk about it in conversation, so it just gets forgotten. And that was one of the reasons why I wanted to be a Latin American and Caribbean studies major because I wanted to be a professor so I could tell people about this stuff. Like I thought it was so important that we knew about, you know, the legacy of everything, slavery, especially because I wasn’t learning it.
MJR: I definitely didn’t learn it. I learn more from things that I’m reading now. Even what you were talking about in terms of systemic oppression here in the United States. Like every day I’m learning something I didn’t know about that.
JD: Because every day there’s something new. Like literally every day there’s some new study that’s like, “oh, this is also why everything is terrible.”
MJR: Yeah. I learned a few months ago that The Great Migration, that I that I was always told was for jobs. People were leavIng the South of the jobs. I’m like, no, they will try not to get lynched. It was a massive escape from crazy Southern white people that the federal government left alone to terrorize. People were just escaping not getting lynched.
JD: Yeah. And yet it still happens today. So it’s a very fun thing to think about.
MJR: But then, you know, racism is over and you know, we’re a welcoming country, all of that. (laughter) So how do you, how do you feel about other first-generation immigrants who are not of the diaspora? Like do you have a lot of relationships or do you identify with other first-generation immigrants who could be Indian or Chinese or Japanese or…
JD: Yeah, I mean I guess the closest relationship I feel is with like Latinx immigrants because I grew up around a large Latinx population and I feel like they have a similar history to like the Caribbean with colonization and all that really fun stuff that happened. And I would say that I do feel a connection with Asian immigrants as well because I think we have a lot of the same pressures, but I would say immigrants of color definitely like Asian, Latinx, you know, Black, I don’t feel like I have as much of a connection with the white immigrants. I just don’t, I guess interact with them as much or I should say like European immigrants and like Canadian immigrants.
MJR: People don’t even consider Canadian immigrants, immigrants.
JD: But they are. it’s a different country. I make them foreign because they make Mexicans foreign.
MJR: Who makes Mexicans foreign?
JD: We do, I guess Americans do. So Canadians are foreign, too.
MJR: It should be.
JD: It’s a different country. They do things differently up there. It’s a nice country but it’s not this country. It’s a different country.
MJR: Interesting. Interesting. Going back, since we went back for your, what you do. We can go back to identity. How do you self-identify in a bio? Do you say “I am Caribbean American? Is there like a term you use? I’ve just settled on Ghanaian American. It’s like as simple as I can make it. But even that’s a little complicated.
JD: Everything is fraught. Everything is complicated. I guess it depends on if who I’m giving this bio to. I like saying that I am West Indian American because that’s a little bit more specific, especially because my parents are from two different parts of the West Indies. But I want to give them equal, whatever.
MJR: Equal cred.
JD: Yeah. Even though one person played a bigger role than the other, but we won’t get into that. So I would say like West Indian American or Afro Caribbean I use… I don’t really identify myself that much. Black.
MJR: Yeah. I always go with Black. Black is the most basic one. I’m Black.
JD: Because honestly, like I said it matters and it doesn’t matter. Like I’m definitely black and you will see that. And the other part is important and it’s not important.
Caribbean food, American food and Lunchtime
MJR: Okay. Alright. The last one, this is the, well it could be a fun one to end on. What does all of this have to do with you in food, right? In my TED Talk, I start my talk with a story about fufu. My mom sending me to school with fufu and the reactions of my friends to which I demanded that my mom never like send me to school with fufu again. And then I asked for specific… I asked for all the foods that my friends were eating, like sandwiches and all these other things, and now I’m looking back American food. I was just like not trying to get teased and you didn’t want to have this stinky food even though I love fufu. So does that play a role or has food done other things for you? Any inspiration?
JD: Well that triggered a memory. I had basically the same situation where my mom sent me to school with like rice and peas and like chicken, like super Jamaican shit.
MJR: Yeah!
JD: Smells amazing.
MJR: Yes it does.
(laughter)
JD: I don’t even think anybody teased me really for my food. Like everybody’s just trying to eat their own food. Maybe they asked me about it, but I was so different. I had an accent. I came kind of in the middle of the school year. I was in the wrong grade. It was just like I’m the only black person. There were so many things that made me so “otherized” that I was like, “don’t give me this anymore.” Like give me Lunchables.
MJR: Yup
(laughter)
JD: Just the grossest…
MJR: Bologna sandwiches. Stuff that you probably would never eat now.
JD: I would never eat any of that garbage. No peanut butter and jelly. Like oh I hate peanut butter and jelly. Like ugh
MJR: I don’t like peanut butter and grape jelly. I like peanut butter and preserves, like strawberry.
JD: I pass. I pass on all of that.
MJR: But bologna never again. And American cheese, which I think is plastic. I think it’s yellow plastic that’s soft.
JD: Ugh, pass on all of that.
MJR: So in that respect then what’s your relationship with Black American food? Because like I grew up with this, for Caribbean people it might be different, but like I, I didn’t understand that macaroni and cheese was a real dish with Black American people. My mom would make us some–off the lunch thing, she started making us American food and she would make macaroni and cheese from the box and that’s what I knew it as. And then my Aunt, my mother’s brother, my Uncle Rocky, he’s married to a Black American woman, my Auntie Althea and we sometimes went to her family’s house for Thanksgiving and the macaroni and cheese was amazing to the point, where I looked forward to going to them for Thanksgiving just for their macaroni and cheese. I didn’t, I was too young to understand that that one was baked and it was a dish or whatever. I just didn’t grow up with that relationship with the collard greens and the yams and all that other stuff. Amazing food that, I’ve learned about, I don’t know maybe a little bit in high school and then after, but I don’t know. How did you come to experience Black American food and what’s like the overlaps? Because I only eat mac and cheese from West Indians in New York. That’s the only place I get my mac and cheese from. Other people be on some of the other stuff. Especially Brooklyn hipsters. (Laughter)
JD: Sadly I am lactose intolerant now, so there’s like only a very sad vegan macaroni and cheese that I can eat. But macaroni and cheese is definitely something that I grew up with. My mom made really good macaroni and cheese RIP to the homie, but I didn’t even know that was an African American food. I have no idea because she was making it when we were in Bermuda and I feel like there weren’t even African Americans like we didn’t know any African American people there. So I don’t know how she got this recipe. I don’t know. I have no idea how this happened. Maybe it’s a Jamaican food too. I have no idea. And obviously, she’s not around for me to ask her. And then I would say I never really had soul food or like African American food until when I was in high school volunteered at this hospital and there was an African American nurse there and she one time made red velvet cake and that was the first time I had that. And I was like, “oh my God, what is this?” She was like southern and stuff, I don’t know where she was from, but she was southern. And then when I got to college I started going to this African American church that was actually like super instrumental in the civil rights movement and like just like a staple in Tallahassee. And they had, a restaurant, they would have a restaurant that they would have on, I don’t know, Wednesday nights or something and they would make soul food and it was like, oh my god, so good. Oooh, it was like, chicken and then like collard greens and cornbread and yams. Oh, so good. Hmmm. So when I think about soul food and like that was kind of what I had there. And then now I’m actually, my partner is African American but he’s Muslim so they still do a lot of African American stuff, but without the pork part to me is the most important part. But that’s okay. Um, so it’s still like collard greens and yams and you know, chicken and like very heavy food. Very heavy, very delicious food.
MJR: That’s definitely one of the identifiers of being Black–seasoned heavy food.
JD: Seasoned food, yes.
MJR: I’m not saying that we have the market on it, but it is definitely something that…
JD: I would say Jamaican food isn’t that heavy. It doesn’t feel as heavy. I guess maybe with like the rice and peas does have coconut milk in it, which is heavy, but not as much better. Like, I don’t know, this feels very rich.
MJR: Oh that’s true. The butter lard thing is a Southern Black American thing.
JD: Yeah. And they do more like fried chicken and stuff like that. Whereas we would do more like of a like a curried chicken, stewed chicken, stuff like that. So I think that makes it a little bit heavier. But I love it. I love southern food. I love soul food, black American food. I’m sad that it came to me so late.
MJR: Me too. And black American food, like this, might be blasphemous to other Americans, it’s the only American food that’s good. I’m sorry. Bologna sandwiches. I don’t know where that came from. I associate that with America if that’s the best we got.
JD: It is a lot of different Americas though. I think of salad. I think that’s American.
MJR: That’s a good one.
JD: I like salad and there are other things that I think are. We don’t think of like, I think one of the issues that we had, especially with like white or like black culture is like we don’t identify certain things as white culture and American culture. So I think there are other things that are good. Apple pie is delicious.
MJR: It is. But that’s like, think of that as a European thing, But it’s a good.
JD: Apple pie is delicious.
The complexity of being an ENODI
MJR: Well do you want to leave the other ENODI folks, because you know, I’m creating this space for us. I mean how you started, how you started it is exactly how I feel like I feel divorced from so many things. I feel divorced from American blackness even though I grew up here, so there’s a lot of It that, of course, identify with, but then I don’t have the lineage and history and all that other stuff. And then I do identify with being an African raised in America, but like I’ll even, like a lot of my Ghanian friends who have traveled back and forth to Ghana a lot. That was not my experience. My parents made a decision to not speak, Twi to me and my sister. That was a choice of there’s. Almost every day I get an older person that will spot me out of a crowd and know I’m Ghanaian.
JD: You look Ghanian.
MJR: They will know I’m Ashanti. And they’ll start speaking, Twi to me and then I don’t. I can’t speak it. And then they give me this look like, oh, do you think you’re better not to speak it? And I’m like, no, I don’t, but my parents… It’s like, it’s, it’s, it’s a mess.
JD: I think it’s definitely complicated and you’re right. Once you start to… I think there’s like different stages of like when you don’t know your family’s language and it’s like, you know, anger. Then like you had to learn more about your family. And especially the way that things are in this country, like where it’s just like assimilate, assimilate, assimilate, you know, keep your head down assimilate. Don’t confuse your kids. You know, our language is broken. Especially, well I would say I don’t, I can’t speak for, Twi, but um, I can speak from Patwah, which is a language. It’s like, well, this is broken English, this is, you know, whatever. This is just like, you know, whatever. This isn’t proper. We shouldn’t be speaking this anyway. Um, there’s a lot of baggage on that. Um, and I guess I accepted it. I understand why it wasn’t. I understand it, but I, you know, I don’t speak that much. And I understand why the choice was made to kind of stick to English.
MJR: Yeah.
JD: Yeah. I will never fully understand it because my mom is gone now, but, I understand the kind of meta reasons why. Yeah.
MJR: Yeah. So do you, do you feel, so personally I feel most comfortable with these ENODI folks? Do you? To me, I feel like you get it. I don’t have to explain to you how I’m black, but that’s different than what you might understand and that I, that my parents were immigrants and I’m first-generation, for ENODI folks it’s all understood and we can just like talk. But to everybody else I got to give a history lesson or something.
JD: I don’t really do that. I really just. Sometimes there will be a reference and I’ll be like, oh actually I should let you know I didn’t come to this country until 1990 whatever, but I’m from the South. I dunno, there are certain things that I was, I don’t know. I still going to feel outside And inside. Like even with other West Indian American kids, like even with other Black kids, even with other immigrant kids, like there’s Always, you know, things that I’m inside of and things that I might like. It feels like in this room where I can kind of see outside. I can hear, but I’m not out there. Like I can understand what’s going on but I’m not. They’re like, I’ll never, I’ll never fully be over there. Like I feel like if I have a kid they will be African American. Like that kid will be African-American, definitely. But like me, I will never. I’ll never quite transitioned over.
MJR: Very interesting. Thank you so much for your time, Jody.
The ENODI Project is a journalistic and creative project telling stories and building a community that documents the lives of first-generation people and immigrants of African, Caribbean and Latin descent globally.
Be interviewed and featured in the The ENODI Project. Sign up for updates and messages.
