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A R M E N I A / B E L I Z E / N E W M E X I C O / I N D O N E S I AWHETS / B A TO JANE / E GY P T / N E W YO R K / M E X I CO C I T Y / P E R U

A J O U R N A L O N F O O D O R I G I N S A N D C U LT U R E .

ED.

ORIGIN FORAGING

SPRING 2019

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In the SiwaBOasis, at A the ERN L top C UofTaLdate E Rtree Y . is C Accu, O M the pollinator. â€“Origin Foraging in Siwa (pg. 18)

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Welcome to Whetstone Magazine, Volume 4. It’s been too long. That’s what I’ve been telling myself, repeatedly, as the days between our last release and the one you’re reading have defiantly compounded. It’s been so long, in fact, that I sort of forgot how this part goes. As a refresher, I went back to Volume 3 to see how I did it then. I talked about building a business with Melissa Shi, and we did that at the end of last year, when we grew Whetstone Magazine into Whetstone Media. I talked about our plans with the filmmaker and director David Alexander, who, in addition to being a dear friend of nearly 20 years, is a hauntingly gifted producer of documentary film and narrative journalism. I hope you’ll take the assertion as a challenge to visit whetstonemedia.co/presents and see for yourself. Revisiting these declarations assuages the anxiety around the span of time since we last printed. We are doing as we have set out to do, without capital, distribution partnerships, advertisements or sponsorships. I suspect those things will come with the growth of the magazine, but that we have been able to produce four magazines, two short films and four video dispatches from over 30 countries in less than two years is, I believe, something to be proud of. We are equally proud of Whetstone’s continuing tradition of centering women, nonwhite, queer and indigenous voices. It’s not just because it improves the publication (it does), but it’s who we are. Whetstone was created to reflect the diversity and brilliance we see within our own communities, and the opportunity for us to share that with you is an immense honor. This magazine is dedicated to my dear friends who seeded this overflowing dream: Franklin James Clary, Angus Brown and Debby Zygielbaum. I love you all, always and forever. Stephen Satterfield Co-Founder, Whetstone Media

PHOTOGRAPH: PETER PRATO

CONTRIBUTORS

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Beth Krietsch

Omar Tate

Karineh Gurjian

Ferron Salniker

Alexandra Bowman

Aurélia Durand

is a food and health writer with a masters degree in public health nutrition. These days, she's most interested in how our changing climate is impacting our health and the way we eat. You can find her online at www.bethkrietsch. com and @beth_kri.

is a food writer and event producer dedicated to connecting people through the celebration of food. She produces food and spirit events across the country, specializing in highlighting producers and chefs from California and Mexico. As a journalist Ferron has covered local food culture for Bay Area publications including SFWeekly, Edible Marin & Wine Country, East Bay Express and more. Her international reporting has appeared in Munchies, Roads & Kingdoms and other travel publications.

has spent the last ten years in the restaurant industry working in some of the best restaurants in New York City and Philadelphia. As a cook he found the lack of diversity and representation of African Americans and other people of color to be unbalanced both in the kitchen and on the plate. Using history as his foundation, Chef Omar Tate produces a body of work congruent with the palates and sensibilities of Black America today.

is an illustrator and designer living in Oakland, CA. She is best known for her editorial work that can be found in various print and digital publications. Alexandra’s art often deals with themes of gender, race, culture and the importance of sharing these stories.

has enjoyed a lifelong commitment to the visual arts, contemporary styles and personalities, and the cultural and historical place art occupies. Karineh has a personal appreciation for current trends in food and art. Karineh awakens the senses through her undeniable understanding of color and texture. After years of living in New York City, the intoxicating California sun persuaded her to move to Los Angeles. Today, she travels from coast to coast attending to her clients' needs.

is a French graphic artist based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Aurélia uses her art as a positive and colorful tool to incite people to accept each other. Her work transmits a strong sense of empowerment of people of color, especially women.

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Lauren Vied Allen

Amanda Yee

Sam Nakahira

Anthony Morano & Leila Elamine

is a visual creative focused on food and travel photography as a means of gaining a larger understanding of cultural identities and enriching her community. She documents culinary traditions, food, people and the crossroads where they collide to create compelling photographic stories. She is the editor and co-founder of The World In A Pocket, where she is committed to exploring the world through the lens of a dumpling.

is a fourth year history student at Grinnell College, interested in sharing stories from history, food, current events, and her daily life through comics. Since she was a kid, she would read comics, manga, and graphic novels all day long. Just as her favorite cartoonists and artists have done for her, she wants to draw stories that transform readers' worlds, perspectives, and thoughts. She is currently working on creating a nonfiction, historical graphic novel about a Japanese American food retailer. Her website is: www.samnakahira.com/

is an African American, Chinese and Norwegian expat chef from California. The Blues Woman is her baby, and way for her to tell her story about all the women who have come before her. She is classically trained as a chef and also went to university for English and Sociology. She writes articles for magazines and takes a special interest in the intersection of food and justice.

Leah Penniman

is a Black Kreyol farmer who has been tending the soil for twenty years and organizing for an anti-racist food system for fifteen years. She currently serves as founding co-executive director of Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, New York, a people-of-color led project that works to dismantle racism in the food system.

Say hello to Leila Elamine and Anthony Morano. Theyâ€™re the Recipe Hunters, an endearing and multi-talented team traveling the world creating short films, photography and writing that celebrates the connection between humans and food. The Recipe Hunters are in search of age-old, traditional recipes that have been passed down from generation to generation, and their work highlights these artisan food processes from around the world. The Recipe Hunters are part of Culinary Heritage Co., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with a mission to promote cultural pluralism through food. 5

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Alejandro Montes

is a photographer, filmmaker, script writer and restaurateur living in Mexico City. His main objective is to join people through images, stories and food. His main work has been in advertising, creating both written and audiovisual pieces. His pieces have won several awards in Mexico City and Latin America such as Círculo Creativo and Ojo de Iberoamérica.

Soleil Ho

is the restaurant critic for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Lydia Carey

George McCalman

Martin Westlake

Aliena Cameron

is a freelance writer based out of Mexico City. She has worked as an editor and writer for various publications including Delta Sky magazine, Luxury Latin America, The News, The New Worlder, International Living and Mexico News Daily among others. Lydia has been blogging and writing in Mexico for over a decade and lives a double life as a local tour guide in Mexico City. She is the author of "Mexico City Streets: La Roma," a living and visiting guide to one of the city's most eclectic neighborhoods.

is a British photographer based in Jakarta, Indonesia for the last 30 years. He travels frequently throughout SE Asia shooting hospitality, design and food for a diverse range of editorial + commercial clients. When not on assignment Martin continues to shoot a long term personal project on Indonesia’s volcanoes. You can view more of his work at : www.martinwestlake.com

is an artist and creative director based in San Francisco. He runs a creative studio McCalman.co which produces projects across analog and digital platforms. Additional to designing Whetstone magazine, he has a monthly illustrated culture column called ‘Observed’ in the San Francisco Chronicle. His first book ‘Illustrated Black History’ will be published by Harper Collins in August 2020. His exploits can be followed at @McCalmanCo on Instagram and Twitter.

is a designer and illustrator living in Oakland, CA. She graduated from the California College of the Arts (CCA) in 2017 with a BFA in Graphic Design. Her work pulls inspiration from pop-culture, music, and narrative fiction, blending whimsical stories with bold graphics. She currently works with George McCalman on a variety of exciting publication and branding projects for specialty clients. To see more of her work visit: alienazoe.com. Photo by Alora King.

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To Debby, With Love

On November 8, 2018, we lost a beloved friend, and editor of this magazine, Debby Zygielbaum. Debby edited all three volumes of Whetstone, and before she passed, was in the process of working on this one. Debby was a witty and exuberant genius, a savant on all things farming, biology and shepherding. For 15 years she worked as a pioneering biodynamic viticulturist at Robert Sinskey Vineyards in Napa, California where she raised sheep and grew pristine grapes with unparalleled fervor and dedication. She was righteous and funny with a bellowing and unencumbered laugh. We will be miss her beyond belief. She is survived by her wife Kerrigan Valentine who she loved dearly.

The Future of Coffee in Cajamarca WHETSTO NE

Climate change has Peruâ€™s preeminent coffee-growing region braces for an uncertain future. CONTRIBUTOR PHOTOGRAPHY

Beth Krietsch Michael Medoway (for Chameleon Cold-Brew)

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Thirty-three-year-old Edilmer Rojas Suarez’s coffee farm sits 1,360 meters above sea level in San Ignacio, Peru — one of 13 provinces that make up the Cajamarca region, a lush, mountainous area in Peru’s northern highlands, where coffee farming is an important economic driver that supports the livelihoods of thousands. In certain pockets of the world, climate, elevation and other factors align to form the perfect recipe for coffee production. Cajamarca is one of those places, a region where it seems specialty coffee is meant to be grown. With high altitudes, fertile soil, ideal temperatures and a historically semi-dry climate, coffee farms known for producing high-quality Arabica dot the hillsides, contributing to the region’s status as Peru’s leading exporter of premium coffee. Although the land is fertile and dense with dedicated coffee producers, climate change has made farming in the region significantly more challenging in recent years. Irregular rains and warmer temperatures are now the norm, complicating the drying process and compromising the quality of the coffee. Leaf rust, known in the region as la roya, and problems with pests are also increasingly problematic as temperatures rise. On the other end of the spectrum, frosts are a concern too. For smallholder farmers who invest so much in their coffee crop, a sudden rainstorm or a brush with la roya can have devastating consequences. When coffee crops are wiped out, so is a farmer’s income. When quality goes down, so might a farmer’s pay. Living in one of the poorest regions of Peru, these farmers rely on the income from coffee sales not only to sustain their farms, but also to feed their families, send their children to school, cover transportation costs and other expenses that fall far closer to needs than wants. To understand what coffee farming brings to the local community, consider Jose Garcia Moreto, who started farming after buying a piece of land in the region. At first, he farmed cocoa in addition to coffee, and would sell his coffee in very small amounts. Once his farm matured and he became involved in Cenfrocafe, a well-regarded local cooperative, his farm has became profitable enough to allow him to do things like send his son to school and employ others in the community. “I feel happy because when my friends come over I can give them work,” Moreto said. “It’s how we earn money. It’s the way we make a living.” Coffee farming is always risky. Even in the best conditions, there’s plenty of room for error. But as the climate changes and seasonal weather patterns become less consistent or altogether different, a farmer’s ability to produce a quality product is even less of a guarantee. Suddenly, plenty of new variables are thrown into play and navigating them is far from straightforward.

THE DRY SEASON GETS WETTER In years past, Cajamarca’s coffee-harvesting season was mainly dry, allowing farmers to lay their coffee beans out to slowly and evenly dry under the hot sun for weeks at a time. But changing weather patterns mean rainstorms are now common during this drying season, and a sudden storm can have devastating effects. The point of drying is to allow the coffee to achieve a certain moisture content, which is closely tied to the coffee’s quality. When drying coffee beans get wet, moisture content changes, quality is affected, flavor can be lost and cup defects are more likely.

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But that’s not all. Excessive rains during the harvest can cause the coffee cherries to take on too much water and eventually burst, or fall to the ground, which, again, can drastically reduce quality or even make the fruit unusable. Suarez knows the effects of changing rain patterns all too well. “It has been nothing but rain during the harvest season,” he said, adding that the climate and temperature have made it harder to dry coffee in a way that maintains quality. He is able to use a dryer that’s owned by Cenfrocafe, but the dryer is shared among many members of the cooperative and therefore not always accessible.

He’s still grateful that the dryer is available through Cenfrocafe, which helps its members produce the best possible organic and fair trade coffee by providing various mechanisms of support like technical assistance, loans, farm inputs, economic and leadership training, and professional development. Like many in the region, Suarez’s farm is a family affair. He tends the land on a parcel that originally belonged to his father, who is now in his eighties. Suarez finds joy in producing a quality product that provides income to support him and his family. “It’s arduous work that has to be done, but we are getting it done,”

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Black Dinners Matter Decoding the dinner table in African American cinema. CONTRIBUTOR

Amanda Yee & Soleil Ho

ILLUSTRATION

AurĂŠlia Durand

In the films Moonlight, Do the Right Thing and The Color Purple, the dinner table is erected as a potent metaphor for ownership and communion. Can the details of these meals show us what it takes to rebuild connections and safe spaces that have been lost to or compromised by white supremacy? With four centuries of slavery as the backdrop, what’s eaten and where depicts how enslaved Africans and their descendants reclaimed their agency, had it stripped away, and in some cases, even participated in supremacist structures like patriarchy.

We begin with Do The Right Thing, when Mookie, the film’s protagonist portrayed by Spike Lee, throws a trash can through a pizza parlor window, signaling a violent transition into a new world. Much intelligent analysis has been written about this scene since the film premiered in 1989, but here, let’s focus on the pizzeria, that hermetically sealed sanctuary of whiteness, which during this climax is suddenly ripped open and exposed to the elements. Until that point, Mookie, the pizzeria’s delivery person and sole ally in the major-

ity Black neighborhood, got to traverse both realms — he thought — freely. After all of his hemming and hawing about where his allegiances lie, Mookie throws that trash can and repudiates white supremacy once and for all. That’s why this feels so powerful: Up until this point, the residents of this fictitious version of Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood settle for eating at this pizza parlor, a space that was not their own to define. Radio Raheem’s attempt to order food while his boombox blasts Public Enemy’s Fight the Power is a perfect example of this. The music is treated like an intrusive foreign body, and he can’t order until he shuts it off. “You come into Sal’s, there’s no music. No rap, no music, no music, no music,” says Sal Fragione, the owner of the restaurant. When the film came out, the Howard Beach incident, in which a group of young Black men were violently harassed out of a pizza parlor in Queens by white men, was still fresh on our minds. One of the men, Michael Griffith, was chased onto the Belt Parkway and fatally struck by a car. Echoing this assault, Lee shows us how easily the veneer of civility can be shed, and the ensuing riot and violence highlight the fragility of it all. This concept of spatial ownership and mastery is also integral to The Color Purple. Trapped in a marriage at 14, protagonist Celie is condemned to a life of drudgery. In a montage sequence, she struggles to wrangle her new husband’s badly behaved children, clean up his trashed house, and feed them all. She gradually improves and reclaims the space, and yet when her husband, Albert, comes home, he sits at the clean dinner table and rests his muddy, booted feet right on top of it. This is a power move, signaling to Celie that she owns nothing in the house, not even her own labor. Intoxicated by his rule over Celie, Albert is indifferent to her unless something she does displeases him. Within patriarchy, the woman’s realm is the home, especially the kitchen. Though Celie may certainly take pride in that work, a hallmark of patriarchy is that it’s the man of the house who ultimately owns everything. He is entitled to women’s labor by virtue of his position in the gender hierarchy.

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When Celie, Albert, and Albert’s children actually eat at that table, the scene is total chaos. The children scream and cry, Celie attempts to maintain order, and her husband fumes with resentment towards them all. The situation doesn’t improve when they have visitors. The stakes just get higher. Anxious to please the guests, Albert terrorizes Celie, who must perform perfectly as a cook and maid. At dinner, he dominates the conversation, bullying Celie into silence. Unlike the pizzeria in Do the Right Thing, this is a Black-owned space, but one that is so poisoned by patriarchy that the notion of it being a nourishing space is impossible. Instead, it’s a cage. In Moonlight, Chiron’s mother doesn’t feed him. Instead, as a boy, he is fed by her drug dealer, Juan, who drives him to a fast food joint when they first meet. Throughout Chiron’s childhood, he’s fed by Juan and his partner, Teresa. At their house, plates of soul food, served tenderly, coax him into opening up to them. Surrounded by scenes of stress and chaos — of Chiron’s abusive mother and macho, bullying peers — these scenes around the table are a reprieve for both the viewer and the character. It is a space for difficult conversations and emotional honesty, where we see Juan and Teresa doing their best to intervene with the child they’ve informally adopted. “Stop putting your head down in my house,” Teresa tells a teenaged Chiron as he slouches over his plate. “You know my rules: it’s all love and all pride in this house.” This is their space, and they are free to define it as they wish. Stripped of music and devoid of any indulgent close-ups of the food, the scenes demonstrate that, with Juan and Teresa, what happens around the table is the most important part of these meals. The tonal contrast in these scenes encapsulate Chiron’s inherent conflict, constantly torn between his need for human connection and a desire to live up to a stoic masculine ideal. Much of what he faces throughout the film fits the description of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, a condition coined by educator and author Dr. Joy DeGruy to name the psychological obstacles faced by African-American communities after generations of chattel

slavery and oppression. That history, which transpired without any meaningful therapeutic interventions or social acknowledgement of the scale of that trauma, has led to a host of negative residual impacts. Hopelessness, extreme feelings of suspicion and paranoia, depression, anxious hypermasculinity and racialized self-hatred are among the symptoms addressed in her book. The point she makes again and again is that AfricanAmerican communities were repeatedly brutalized by white society both during and after slavery, then invalidated and blamed for their troubles.

If you’re told that the residual, generationally compounded effects of centuries of oppression are just “your culture,” why would you seek help for that trauma? How do you even begin? Moonlight offers another way. More than anything, the table scenes are a demonstration of what it means to truly check in with each other, to slowly and precisely heal a traumatized psyche. Food was a weapon of control by slaveholders, most often used as a mechanism for domination and exploitation. In addition to being fed inadequate weekly rations — which

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Adrian Miller, author of Soul Food writes consisted of “five pounds of starch (cornmeal, rice or sweet potatoes); a couple pounds of cured meat, and 1 jug of molasses” — to be enslaved meant prohibition from foods like flour and sugar, to distinguish between classes. Though some slaveholders did use the denial of food as a means of punishment, there were also those that feared mass revolt. After working in servitude, from sunup to sundown, enslaved Africans were further demeaned by slaveholders at mealtimes. Meals were served out of troughs, and those

brought to the fields came in buckets filled with slop. There were no utensils, and eating and drinking water were both done by hand. The idea of eating together as a community, in leisure or with any sense of enjoyment,was completely unimaginable; it was survival. It is nothing short of miraculous that “Soul Food” — a byproduct of the Black liberation movement — exists at all. It is even more miraculous to know that Southern food, like jazz, is a defining American marker of culture, not just for African-Americans, but for all Americans. Though it has tried for 400 years, white supremacy has been unable to

stifle the Black imagination. From the 17th century onward, enslaved Africans in some areas of the South were permitted to sell and trade livestock, as well as grow food on small plots of land, commonly known as provision grounds. This was no act of goodwill by slaveholders, who by and large allocated barely arable land for those purposes—rather, they saw it as a hands-off way to cut down on the food bill. Yet that is where we begin to see food as a precursor to liberation and autonomy for enslaved Africans. They began to claim Sundays for cook-

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ing finer meals than what they were allotted during the rest of the week. This meant that for the first time since they had been taken captive, meals could be for enjoying, solidifying cultural identity and offering one another some type of reprieve from the cruelty of their captivity. Provision grounds undermined the infantilizing stereotype that Africans were incapable of autonomy. As Adrian Miller writes, on the basis of these provisional plots alone, “the ideological justification for slavery” had been usurped. That sort of “soft” rebellion, that of simply enjoying a meal, is key to Celie’s narrative in The Color Purple. After a heavy first act, she slowly reclaims her sense of self by moving within the bounds of her role. It’s a delicate dance. We see this in her initial interaction with Shug Avery, a club singer who is also Albert’s first love. When Shug arrives at their house, she’s taken in with an illness and is confined to an upstairs room. Albert uncharacteristically takes over the kitchen, fumbling along as Celie watches. He may own the kitchen, but it’s obvious he has no idea how to make sense of it. The film quickly cuts to the breakfast he produces, which is literally on fire as he brings it upstairs. The tray is violently rejected, thrown against the wall outside of Shug’s room and reduced to a bloody-looking smear. Meanwhile Albert, the macho patriarch, cowers in terror. This is a moment when the order of things is upsidedown. Celie takes the opportunity to make her own version of the tray. A close-up shot of the food as it cooks — a sizzling slice of cured ham, three sunny-side-up eggs and fresh pancakes — emphasizes its beauty and luxuriousness. The shot of Celie carrying the tray upstairs is framed just like the shot of Albert doing the same, but here the finished tray is overfilled with biscuits, grits, coffee and even a small flower vase. Though Celie hides when she delivers the tray to Shug, it’s accepted without protest. This is the first moment of tenderness in the film since the very first act. It doesn’t feel coincidental that it’s marked by a close-up of food that actually looks appetizing. Unlike the meals shared at the table downstairs, this one is given as a gesture of kindness and sympathy. Shug is adult Celie’s first ally and friend, and it all begins with breakfast.

The iconic final meal in Moonlight shares many of those characteristics. It’s prepared by Kevin, Chiron’s childhood friend and former flame, in the diner where he works. Here, a plate of arroz con pollo is given star treatment. It’s almost unprecedented in media to see a Black man cooking for another Black man out of a sense of care for him. Perhaps this context explains the power and intensity of this scene. It’s intimate and slow, indulging in warmly lit close-up shots of Kevin’s hands chopping cilantro and molding white rice in a ramekin while intense chamber music plays in the background. After vignettes showing

the hardness of Chiron’s adult life, in which he has adopted a tougher, more masculine persona, the generosity and sweetness in Kevin’s gesture is a disarming contrast. In this space that they’ve informally created together, two men can freely open up to each other without persecution. With this gesture, Kevin completes the work that Teresa and Juan began when Chiron was a closed-off, terrified child, and for Chiron, he is finally able to shed the persona he’d built around his tender, inner self. The Black imagination offers a reprieve

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and a place of emotional and physical nourishment. The beauty of this gesture, and the way food stokes this imagination, is about ensuring one anotherâ€™s immediate survival. It is almost as if to say, if only just for this moment â€” this Sunday, this Civil Rights march, this bus or train ride, this meal before you partake in your education, before you go, before you stay, because you survived, because you are deserving of joy and love â€” you have a place of belonging here. Even if shielding one another from larger oppressive forces is overwhelming, and seemingly futile, this powerful

imagination is an inadvertent act of resistance. Within the constraints of white supremacist patriarchy, film is one way Black artists and creators have attempted to manifest their own visions of what it means to be Black in the United States. Food as a metaphor to tap into that particular strain of thought has centuries of work behind it.

determination and ownership. The struggle continues to this day, but so too does the work to reclaim the table: in the labor of Black farmers young and old, in the writings of scholars and cookbook authors who piece together histories from scraps of old recipes, in food programs like the Black Panther Free Breakfast program, and in every meal that the community shares together.

From enslaved Africans hiding seeds in their hair to Celie building sisterhood with a basket of biscuits, the story of African American food has also been a story about self-