My father taught me to love Assata Sharkur, to hate all institutions and to love apple pie. Yes. The man who raised my on Black Panthers for Beginners, Pan-Africanism for Beginners, Malcolm X for BeginnersSonia Sanchez’s protest poetry was also a result of a long-lasting love affair with American traditionalism’s symbolic pastry.
My story is that my dad loved apple pie as a kid. His grandmother got tired of him asking her to bake it. He learned to slice, spice, and sugar the apples, add lemon juice, butter, and then put it in a prepared crust. Over the years, he perfected the cinnamon-to-nutmeg ratio and his McIntosh apple selection standards. It was so delicious that people waited to get their pies at every extended family event. He had to hire unpaid workers because the demand was so high. How American.
My sister and I didn’t feel exploited, though, when he enlisted our help. The apple-laden wood table was a favorite of ours. The large metal mixing bowl, the juice from the stirred apples, brown and spiced, tart with lemon. We took samples from the bowl at every stage of each step of the process as we were rigourous taste-testers. We would make a quick weekday version between holidays. We would make our own all-natural sugar-free apple sauce. Dad would add cinnamon, nutmeg, and so much more sugar to it than the store had. My aunties and mother helped me set up and decorate my college dorm room. My father brought his own nurturing gift: a large case of organic instant oatmeal from a health food store, cinnamon apple flavored. Perfect for a girl who can barely cook. Simply add boiling water to the top of the cup and you’re good to go.
Even though I have stopped eating oatmeal, I still start my day with it. Every morning, I mix cinnamon and nutmeg in simmering coconut milk before adding the oatmeal. The kitchen air reminds me of the sweet man who supported my militant critique. When I miss him most, I add apples to the coconut milk. On holidays, on my father’s birthday, or the anniversary of the day he passed away, my sister will invite her daughters into the sacred ceremony: a mostly homemade apple pie.
Do you have a similar tale? This tribute to my father could be written over and over with pancakes, his other speciality. On my father’s first birthday after he passed, we went to his favorite diner and ordered what he would order, the Belgian waffle. When I can’t see his smile, when I can’t hear his voice, when he’s not there to celebrate a new victory with me, edible sweetness seems like the available proxy for how I want to feel.
My father died from lack of access to healthcare. So, I was able to learn how to read the lab reports that are generated when blood tests are done at a physical. Guess what? My blood sugar levels are high. Not quite diabetic, not quite pre-diabetic, but if there was a pre-pre-diabetic … I would be in that range. And now I am thinking about the emotional work sugar does in my life — the place-holding work that a sweet treat does for me when I can’t experience the comfort of a hug from a loved one.
“Give me some sugar,” the elder women say, and I gratefully give them a kiss on the cheek. But now, because of the pandemic, I don’t even remember the last time I kissed an elder. We are missing so much sweetness. But this year, like every year, the Valentine’s Day industry is churning out its own version of sweetness, conveniently available for same-day delivery.
I have been as complicit as anyone in this Valentine’s Day conspiracy. When I was in high school, my mom would gift me my favorite chocolates on Valentine’s Day morning — the ones with messages inside the foil wrappers — and I would share them with my friends at school, giggling as if the love messages were our fortunes. In college, I would buy bags of individually wrapped “fun-sized” candy bars and hand them out to strangers on and around the campus, savoring the sweetness of people’s surprised smiles. Sweetness should always be portable, shareable and well-packaged. It should be easily accessible.
Remember how I said to you that my father taught me to be critical of everything? My father would remind us that sweetness is war on a capitalist planet. Just like everything else. North American corporations ignore Indigenous land rights in order to tap maple syrup. The United States sent the contras in terror to Central America to take over the fruit industry. Corporate honey producers’ extractive practices are part of a crisis in pollinators that threatens the entire food supply. The Dutch East India Company committed a genocide against Bandanese in order to obtain a monopoly over nutmeg. What about sugarcane?
The first plantation to use forced labor from Africans kidnapped into slavery chattel was a sugarcane plantation located in Boca de Nigua, an island. Ay-ti (the Indigenous Taíno word for the island now shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic). Rafael Trujillo, dictator, established the bateysystem to exploit Haitian workers in conditions that are too similar to those of plantation history. According to the Batey Foundation, this system creates an underclass with “no public services, no legal protections, and no economic opportunities.”
In the early 20th century, when Dominican sugar workers rose up, led by Mamá Tingó, plantation owners sent scouts to the small islands of the Caribbean and recruited the poorest of the poor, including starving children, to do the work instead of improving the conditions. These workers were transported by ship in the bareboat hold.
My grandfather was one of those children who were starving.
He told me of being sick in his boat the entire way. At the age of 11, he almost died from overwork, and a bite from a bull on a Dominican Sugar Plantation. If two other workers — a husband and wife he had never met — had not decided to save his life, I would not be writing this. We wouldn’t exist. Two adult workers who were exploited to brew herbs to give shelter and safety to a child is the sweetness, or safety beneath what we call sweetness. The possibility of generosity and dignity, life-saving care. That couple became my grandfather’s health care system under impossible conditions.
Ana-Maurine Lara organized a Black Feminist Delegation in the Dominican Republic. I visited the first sugar plantation at Boca de Nigua. I was standing there when a black bull walked slowly through a grove full of trees, landing on the remains of sugar stalks. The wise animal might have been doing his own ancestral work. But as I looked into his eyes, I saw the story of my grandfather come back to me. You should stop eating sugar for one year, beginning today.
It was so easy. A year-long purge from sugar cane. I had to tell a tale as old and as close as possible about the origins of slavery whenever someone offered me sweet treats or asked me why my eating habits were different. I shared with hundreds of people the story of slavery’s origins on a sugar plantation. It was also the location of the first rebellion by enslaved Africans in Americas. Fatima Portorreal (Black feminist anthropologist) shared her story about Ana Maria, a Congolese-born woman who led a revolutionary revolt in that area and established the first Black communal government of the Americas. I told them about how the Haitian revolutionaries adored that spot and came to announce the end slavery right there. That year I learned something about myself. How you can find what you want. I have learned to feel the feeling, if not the name, of something I desire more than sweetness.
That cleanse was many years ago. I am still trying hard to find what it is I want, with my mouth and hands, and in my heart. But I know this much — I want to see the end of slavery in my lifetime. I want a relationship that can save your life and mine. I want all our ancestors present with us in all their dignity. I want solidarity and care in all circumstances. And suddenly, I remember that my father showed me how to hold and use a knife before he taught to sugar the apples.
