Bryant Terry is an activist chef and co-author with Anna Lapee’ of Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen

AM: What is grub?

Bryant: When Anna and I started throwing around ideas for our book, we thought about the terms organic and sustainable, which we embraced, but we wanted to offer the world a term that went beyond describing the quality of food. So we redefined the word ‘grub.’ Our definition includes not only the quality of food, but also things like worker’s rights and food equity. For us, Grub is food that’s grown locally, that’s in season, and that respects the farmer and the farm workers. It’s also food that’s accessible to all because there is a disparity in access to healthy food. Grub should be available to everyone.

AM: Who are some of the people that have inspired you to do what you do?

Bryant: My interest in and passion for food and farming issues comes from my grandparents. Both of my grandfathers grew up in rural Mississippi and worked on farms that their families owned. When they moved to Memphis, TN they brought the foods, food-ways, and survival skills from the country into an urban environment. My grandparents had huge organic gardens in their backyard. That’s where I started learning about food systems, and because we had such a big family everyone was a part of helping, not only planting and harvesting food, but also preparing meals. The grandkids would be shelling, snapping, shucking and doing everything that needed to be done. I was one of the grandkids who took a special interest in cooking. So a lot of my foundation in the work that I do now goes back to my family.

My political entrée into this work came when I was in graduate school studying history and I learned more about the Black Panthers and the work that they were doing in Oakland around social justice. Their grocery giveaways and free breakfast for school children programs were developed because of the Panthers’ analysis around poverty, malnutrition and institutional racism. I was so excited to learn about how they looked at those issues back in the late ‘60s and ‘70s, and I see my work as part of that continuum.

AM: That’s something that people don’t remember about the Black Panthers- how they provided food access.

Bryant: I talk about this in my public presentations a lot: the sensational portrayal of the Black Panthers as crazy gun totting radicals. It erases the history of some very meaningful programs that they did in the community. The food piece was just one. They had everything from bartering, teaching people how to do plumbing, teaching people how to repair shoes- useful basic skills. African American and other communities need these kinds of small skill economies, built on the expertise of people in their local communities.

AM: I read a comment written to you that said, “thank you for showing people that you can be Black and green and healthy”. What are the challenges?

Bryant: It was more challenging initially when I first got into the work because a lot of people in general were surprised that a young African American man was so deeply invested in food and farming issues. A lot of people of color didn’t see the relevance of food and farming issues to their lives.

I grew up in the southeastern part of the United States and had access to family land, and my family helped foster my connection to the Earth at an early age. Often I have to educate people, including African Americans, that after Native Americans, African Americans were the protectors of the land in this country. We were the agricultural backbone throughout the period of enslavement. One of the reasons that this is such a prosperous nation is because of the free labor of enslaved Africans and African-Americans for over 250 years. For me it’s about reclaiming this legacy of being connected to the Earth given that we've been so disconnected from it.

Another challenge that I faced was convincing social justice activists that this food justice movement was crucial to building a broader social justice movement. A lot of organizations and projects that were doing amazing work around youth leadership, youth organizing, youth development, and the like didn’t include this piece about consumption and food and farming issues. In my mind, it was almost a prerequisite to talk about these things because if we’re talking about creating a social justice movement, if we’re talking about helping young people to be healthy adults, then what they’re eating and how they’re connecting with food is essential.

AM: There is a Chinese proverb that reminds me of the way you teach, “Tell me and I’ll probably forget. Show me and I might remember. Get me involved, and I’ll learn it forever”.

Bryant: Young people do not want to be talked to or lectured to. When I started b-healthy with a group of chefs and activists in New York City, we understood that the young people we worked with were coming from a long day in school to an after school project. The last thing they wanted to do was sit in a two hour workshop in which they’re being talked to or talked at. We certainly wanted to create space for us to impart information and educate them. But we also understood that they had a lot of knowledge that needed to be shared. We thought that it was important for the workshops to be experiential. That’s where the cooking component came in. When young people are in the kitchen preparing foods, they feel empowered. They are much more likely to try new foods if they cook them, because it is their creation.

AM: You can make change and celebrate at the same time. Here’s a quote of yours, ‘Grub is a product of being a part of the Hip Hop generation.’

Bryant: Hip-Hop runs through my veins. Although I am not working directly in the Hip-Hop industry anymore, I freestyle every single day, I DJ as a hobby, and I stay current with cutting-edge Hip-Hop culture. Collage has always been fundamental to Hip-Hop and the assemblage of both original and borrowed materials in my cookbook section in Grub is a product of being a part of the Hip-Hop generation. When I was thinking about this book, I realized that it was important for me to create an identity for my work, so I brought together a lot of my influences- visual art, music, cooking—to create a collage of those elements. Hip-Hop is about celebration. So I wanted grub to be fun.

People who read the book are going to come to it for different reasons. Some people will approach it from an intellectual standpoint and want to know about the issues covered by Anna in the first section. Some people are just into cooking and are not as deeply invested in knowing about all the politics around food. So they can just cook some new and funky recipes. The hope is that people who are just cooking eventually think about the politics and go to the first section of the book; and that the people who are just thinking about the ideas and politics of food, eventually feel compelled to get into the kitchen cook and have fun.