Photos from Soul Fire Farm courtesy of Afropunk and Yes Magazine
One could also say that racism is toxic, so by metaphorically refusing an all-American diet of meat and potatoes, Yvette and thousands of others refuse to swallow what will, in fact, poison them: self-hatred. (Shange 91)
Recognize that land and food have been used as a weapon to keep black people oppressed …Recognize also that land and food are essential to liberation for black people. (Curtis Hayes Muhammed via Soul Fire Farm)
In If I Can Cook/You Know God Can, Shange celebrates food and farming as a global black experience, while pointing to the disregard of black life that informs American food policy. In this way, If I Can Cook shows that decolonizing our minds goes hand in hand with decolonizing our diets. Shange’s statements evoke principles of radical farming, which emphasizes solidarity with people marginalized by food apartheid and reverence of ancestral knowledge of the land.
In fact, we knew something about the land, sensuality, rhythm, and ourselves that has continued to elude our captors (Shange 41)
Soul Fire Farm, a family farm committed to the dismantling of oppressive structures that misguide our food system, partners with Project Growth, a restorative justice program in Albany, in order to continue the literal work of “eluding our captors” via ancestral knowledge of the land and ourselves. The initiative brings convicted teenagers to the farm, both as a way for them to earn money to pay their restitution and “heal relationships with their communities, the land, and themselves.”