I’m proudly Jamaican. My entire family is from Jamaica. The last time I got to visit was over Christmas break during junior year of high school; we had just finished building a new house on my family’s land. The typical routine is that as we drive from Kingston airport, we stop at the Juici Patty factory on the way to Saint Elizabeth. (I’ve never seen what it looks like, cause I’ve slept through it every time, and not one person decided it would be nice to wake Kami up so she can see what the factory looks like.) I usually wake up groggy 30 minutes later, but then I get a patty and a carton of sorrel (a drink made from hibiscus flowers) to eat during the ride. Then we get home, drive past the mango tree in the front yard that my mom’s parents are buried under, and see the house she grew up in slightly down the path (bright lavender, with a cross painted on the front door). In the morning, my mom makes me run down the road to grab a bag of flour so we can make fry dumpling for breakfast to eat with our ackee (the national fruit), and my aunt comes over with a whole bunch of mangoes and soursop from her tree. We head to the beach — my uncle drives us — and in the middle of the day, he surprises us with a big block of ice from the back of his truck, shaving some ice that we top with fruit punch syrup. My mom points out where she went to school and where she bought oranges right outside the school gate. I meet so much family I didn’t know existed, and get three times that number of mosquito bites. And then when we leave to come back to the states, we buy a box of frozen patties and stock up on white rum and red label wine at the airport duty free store. My mom didn’t grow up in the states at all. American history is not her strong point. But despite that, she raised my sister and I to be so aware of Black American history as well as our own culture. In third grade, she gave me The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. I read Sojourner Truth’s Autobiography, and made her out of a potato for a class project. If there was a new Black History movie, best believe my family was in the movie theatre. Or buying it on DVD and BluRay. (We didn’t even have a BluRay player.) Every MLK Jr. Day, my mom would sit my sister and me down (under our dining room table: our house had a weird set-up), and we would watch his speech start to finish. Now I take my mom out to watch The Color Purple (my favorite Broadway show of all time) and August Wilson plays, to try and return the favor. My mom did such a great job of raising my sister and me to be so educated and aware of blackness growing up in a society where we were taught to hate ourselves more than anything. Despite everything being stacked up against us, the mental tax that comes with existing in this oppressive system on the daily, I’m so happy every day to wake up and be black. There isn’t a more resilient group of people, despite those trying to stomp out our existence and dehumanize us. The power of black joy is unmatched: the music, the art, the poetry and writing and thought, the culture, the food, and the laughter. It feels weird to tack a recipe at the end of this, but I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you use it as a moment for some self care. (If you read 30 minutes of Audre Lorde, you may have these as a treat.) I took a pic and sent them to my mom when I first made them (isolating alone in my apartment), and she approved and said the crust looked good. Just like a patty from the store, it made a huge flaky mess whenever you took a bite. So it’s the real deal. Always keep reading, keep learning, keep listening. Jamaican Spinach Patties A Jamaican Patty is a flaky pastry, usually tinted orange, filled with meat or veg. Makes like 16. Recipes usually lie, but this time I’m not kidding, I promise. (This is a perfect recipe when your pantry is running low: I got so many meals out of the recipe. Plus, the ingredients are pretty cheap.) Ingredients for crust:
- Kami Beckford, Center for Creativity Student Ambassador. Find Kami's work on her website.
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