African Diaspora Religions, Anthropology of Religion, Queer Studies in Religion, Religion, Affect, and Emotion, Religions, Medicines, and Healing, Womanist Approaches to Religion and Society, Women of Color Scholarship, Teaching, and Activism Unit

Kitchen Table Conversations

“My childhood breakfast table memories amalgamated aromas  of coffee brewing, bacon frying, and burning hair from overheated hot combs” – Scott Alves Barton

Today we recognize that along with other knowledge systems, foodways, and faith traditions traveled with Enslaved Africans, as they do within every individual or group in migration, immigration, or as refugees. Yet, we need to ask, “Who sources, cooks, and preserves our foods, and holds our culinary cultural traditions, whether sacred or profane, in feasting or in famine?”  Who do we need to be thankful for that placed this food on our table?” In 1990, MacArthur Genius Carrie Mae Weems created her iconic social documentary “Kitchen Table” a photographic series imagining engagements of kith and kin at table. In addition to potential skirmishes, the kitchen table is always already foundational as a locus of commensality; particular ways of knowing, and intergenerational teaching and learning. Our foodways stories share how we are who we are, and what we hold dear, by lauding sacred rites of communion, sacrifice, and succor. Kitchen tables are also sites of homework, needlework, memorialization, putting food by, flirting, healthcare and beauty practices, gossiping, sharing grace, and prayer. Our tables are centers for healing and mourning, strategizing revolutionary change, or starting a radical feminist press…Quoting poet Joy Harjo, “The world begins at a kitchen table, perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing, crying, eating the last sweet bite…” We welcome folks to submit materials for this roundtable discussion.