Food for Thought Curriculum

Food for Thought

Writing and Critical Thinking Curriculum for: The Color of Food, by Natasha Bowens

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Content Towards Liberation:

Creation Stories and Introductions to Indigenous Societies, Food, Culture, Farming, Land and Agronomy

Resources and Content on Indigenous Food Ways (The Color of Food by Natasha Bowens & Agriculture) and Agronomy (Jean Dominique "The Agronomist"), and The Taínos: Men of the Good (Jose Barreiro): Available Here

Week 1: Ground Work (Historical, Cultural Connections to Land, Food and Farming)

Lecture/Content:

The Color of Food: Stories of Race, Resilience, and Farming, by Natasha Bowens.

Ms. Bowens writes:

"For many, agriculture can represent deep pain because of the history of slavery, but also because of current land loss, forced migration, and oppressive farm labor practices . . . But I like to think that we recognize that our legacy with the land is so much more than that . . . 'We have legacies of innovative and cooperative agriculture, traditional food ways, family heritages and powerful stories rooted in the land. How could we not embrace farming as part of our culture and a sacred connection to celebrate?' " (4)

"Close- Read" the passage above. Consider: the comparison of a history marred by slavery and colonization to the beauty, bounty and generosity of indigenous societies harvesting food, ensuring all people in the community are fed, and the peace of prioritizing farming practices that sustain the land.

In her prologue, "Sowing Seeds for the Road," Bowens brings forward her personal history in relation to American land work and chattel slavery. She writes:

The chosen story for people of color in agriculture seems to play out on repeat, reducing our agrarian identity to slavery or farm labor and summing up our communities as deserts in need of food and water. But I know our story is so much richer than that. I can feel that richness when kneeling in the sunshine to sow seeds into the damp soil. I can sense it at the community garden when harvesting side by side with elders born on foreign soil. I can see it when volunteering on urban farms led by Latina mothers changing the health of their communities. I know that if we don't change the story being told, we will continue to lose that connection to our food, culture and land. We will continue to be known as the underserved communities instead of the strong and resilient communities that we are. We will continue to scoff at the idea of tilling the land instead of embracing the beautiful tradition. If we don't tell our stories, we risk being pushed further into the shadows of the national dialogue on whole foods and sustainable living, a dialogue promoting the diets and practices our ancestors had well before the term "organic" came into vogue. (IX)

"Close-Read" the passage above. Consider: How does knowing one's own history and ancestry contribute to one's sense of self, particularly in relationship to food, land, farming and culture? How does telling one's own story bring truth and knowledge where there may have been stereotype or marginalization? How can research and understanding of Indigenous societies, their practices, beliefs and actions, allow us to imagine a healthier, equitable, and truthful relationship to food and culture today? How can this research and understanding also allow us to analyze and constructively criticize the current food industry, its corporatization, cultural appropriation and inaccessibility?

As we consider the complex and numerous historical and present-day connections in our class book, let us begin with some introductory resources. The resources below support a broad understanding of the ancient and historical land and agricultural practices of African civilizations, Native American civilizations (of the Americas, including Central and South American Indigenous people), and Asian civilizations. This framework will allow us to explore more details of this history, as well as make poignant connections to present-day resiliences, triumphs, challenges and injustices surrounding land, farming, and food industry.

Please read the posted documents:

Farming in Ancient Egypt:

https://quatr.us/africa/farming-ancient-egypt.htm

"The Taínos: Men of the Good" by Jose Barreiro:

http://teamsigmasocialstudies.weebly.com/uploads/2/2/7/0/22708616/reading-men_of_the_good.pdf

History of Wheat Farming (West Asia):

https://quatr.us/west-asia/history-wheat-west-asia.htm

South American Farming History:

https://quatr.us/history/norte-chico-history-south-america.htm

Please watch the following videos: Consider: What references does each poet make to food? When does each poet speak about food? What is the function of food - is it a positive memory? A challenging memory? How does food connect the poet to their story, or to their culture? How does food allow the poet to tell the story?

“Afro-Latina” by Elizabeth Acevedo:

Elizabeth Acevedo - "Afro-Latina"

“Waitress” by Liza Jesse Peterson:

Liza Jesse Peterson Waitress

“La Washa” by Mercedes Holtry:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh_1dLU8H0U

"Cruelty Free Mexican Food" by Manuel Ávalos

Manuel Ávalos - "Cruelty Free Mexican Food"

Film:

“Family Ingredients” Clip:

https://www.pbs.org/video/slam-poets-a4rqtp/

Vocabulary:

Subject: a person or thing that is being discussed, described, or dealt with. A branch of knowledge studied or taught in a school, college, or university. A broad idea or body of knowledge; a subject is like an umbrella that covers many topics and issues

Topic: a more focused idea, discussion, matter or issue that identifies a specific person, moment, and the issue at hand. A topic is "funneled" from a subject; often a topic results from asking questions of the subject: who, what, why, where, how

Theme: recurring images, ideas, feelings, and words (language) within a given topic or broader subject. Topics that appear across multiple texts, video, and audio.

Community: a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage.

Agrarian: relating to cultivated land or the cultivation of land. A person who advocates a redistribution of landed property, especially as part of a social movement.

Identity: the distinguishing character or personality of an individual. The relation established by psychological identification of the self.

Personal Narrative: a story written about a personal experience; from the “I” perspective

Advocacy: one who pleads the cause of another; specifically: one who pleads the cause of another before a tribunal or judicial court. Self-Advocacy: to plead your own cause.

Subversive: undermine or disprove the power and authority of an established system or institution. To point out abuses of power.

Context: the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed.

The Americas: inclusive of North, Central, and South America, the Caribbean Islands (the West Indies, the Greater and Lesser Antilles)

Indigenous: originating or occurring naturally in a particular place; native.

Colonization: (historically enacted by Europe) the action or process of settlement among the indigenous people of an area, whereby the colonizer establishes control over the colonized through the taking of natural resources, and through the exploitation and enslavement of native people (historically African people) and “indentured servants.”

Diaspora (Dyaspora): the movement of a population of people from their homeland. These movements are often forced as a result of atrocities such as invasion, enslavement, dictatorship, impoverishment, and the need for natural resources such as food and water. This movement can also come from a choice to emigrate. In Haiti, the word retains a Kreyol spelling and uses “Y.” http://www.diasporaalliance.org/what-is-a-diaspora/

Liberation: Freedom from limits on thought or behavior. To be free from oppression, imprisonment, enslavement. Release.

Food for Thought: Artists and Musicians Focused on Liberation in Language and Identity:

•Ice-Cube and Simone Sanders on white privilege and the violence of white people using the "n" word:

•"Princess Nokia is the Feminist Rapper You Should Know":

"It is ok to be unapologetic . . ." -Princess Nokia

Writing Strategy: Asking Critical Questions and Close Reading for Meaning

Writing strategies are literary tools, devices, structures for organization, methods of research, practices in rhetoric and tone, that support and shape your strongest written expressions and claims.

We will cover many Writing Strategies in this course. For Week 1, we will consider Critical Questions and Close Reading. You will be asked to apply these Writing Strategies in the coming weeks for your writing assignments. For now, get familiar with the concepts and try your best to review the Lecture Content (videos and handouts) using your Critical Questioning and Close Reading skills.

Critical Questions: Critical Thinking is all about pursuing truth through Critical Questions. Critical questions support your arrival at unbiased, well-informed, equitable conclusions or decisions. Critical questions allow you to avoid emotion-based responses or to avoid being manipulated by speakers or advertisers who appeal to emotions rather than facts.

Consider: "5 Questions to Improve Your Critical Thinking Skills" by Ameet Ranadive (Medium.Com) and "Questions that Promote Deeper Thinking," from LAVC.edu

"We’re constantly bombarded by messages designed to persuade us. These messages appear in the following places:

Op-ed pieces that attempt to shape our beliefs
Work documents or meetings where colleagues try to win our support for their proposals
Advertisements that want to persuade us to buy a product

Without critical thinking skills, we are at risk of being manipulated, deceived, or mindlessly led to conclusions that others want us to have. We need strong critical thinking skills so that we can assert our own beliefs and reach our own conclusions.

Here are some general guidelines for Asking Critical Questions:

To understand the structure of the argument, the key questions are:

What are the issue and the conclusion?
What are the reasons?
What are the assumptions?

From here, we can further evaluate the quality of the argument:

4. Are there any fallacies in the reasoning?

5. How good is the evidence?

After analyzing the reasons and assumptions, searching for fallacies, and weighing the evidence, you can then decide whether or not you agree with the argument’s conclusion.

So for any persuasive message you encounter, whether a written document or a speech, you can ask the five questions above to perform your critical analysis.

Additional Guidelines for Critical Questioning:

Classification of Critical Thinking Skills

1. Comprehension (Understanding): to convert information into a form that is personally meaningful, i.e., that makes sense to the individual who is learning it.

• How would you put ______ into your own words? (Paraphrasing)

• What would be an example of _______? (Illustrating)

• How would you translate _______ into visual form? (Concept-Mapping)

2. Application: to apply abstract or theoretical principles to concrete, practical situations.

• How can you make use of _______?

• How could ________ be put into practice?

• How would _______ be converted into an action plan?

3. Analysis: to break down or dissect information into its component parts in order to detect the relationship among the parts or the relationship between the parts and the whole. (For example, identify the underlying causes or sources of disagreement during a class discussion.)

• What are the most important/significant ideas or elements of _______? (Prioritization)

• What assumptions/biases underlie or are hidden within ________? (Deconstruction)

• What parts of ________ would be similar to/different than ________? (Comparison-andContrast)

4. Synthesis: to build up or connect separate pieces of information to form a larger, more coherent pattern. (For example, connect related ideas discussed in separate sections or units of a course into a single, unified product, such as a concept map; integrate ethical concepts learned in philosophy course with marketing concepts learned in a business course to produce a set of ethical guidelines for business marketing and advertising practices.)

• How can this idea be combined with ________ to create a more compete or comprehensive understanding of _________? (Integration)

• How can these different ideas be grouped together into a more general category? (Classification)

• How can these separate _________ be reorganized or rearranged to produce a more comprehensive understanding of the “big picture?”

5. Evaluation: to critically judge the validity (truth), morality (ethics), or aesthetic (artistic) value of ideas, data, or products by using relevant assessment criteria (standards for judging quality).

• How would you judge the accuracy or validity of _________?

• How would you evaluate the ethical (moral) implications or consequences of ________?

• How would you rate the aesthetic quality (beauty) of ___________?

(Sources: https://medium.com/@ameet/5-questions-to-improve-your-critical-thinking-skills-part-1-283cf3d1506c

https://www.lavc.edu/profdev/library/docs/promotethink.aspx)

Now, on to Close Reading:

Close Reading: Close reading is thoughtful, critical analysis of a text that focuses on significant details or patterns in order to develop a deep, precise understanding of the text's form, craft, context and meanings. Close reading directs the reader's attention to the text itself, rather than exclusively focusing on the content. For example, if you were to read a poem, you could analyze the words of the poem or the lines to make meaning. When close reading the poem, you can ask critical thinking questions like: when was this poem written? what was the social or political climate at that time? where is the author from and how might that give them an important perspective or expertise in the poem? what are some responses to this poem; how has this poem been received by society or academia?

Ultimately, Close Reading is about making meaning while asking critical questions. Asking critical questions supports your critical thinking. When we are asked our opinion on a matter, we can often derive our most informed, thoughtful and extended perspective when we prioritize critical questions and critical thinking.

Here are some additional tips to get us started with Close Reading:

1. Read with a pencil in hand, and annotate the text.

"Annotating" means underlining or highlighting key words and phrases—anything that strikes you as surprising or significant, or that raises questions—as well as making notes in the margins. When we respond to a text in this way, we not only force ourselves to pay close attention, but we also begin to think with the author about the evidence—the first step in moving from reader to writer.

2. Look for patterns in the things you've noticed about the text—repetitions, contradictions, similarities.

3. Ask questions about the patterns you've noticed—especially how and why.

4. Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text. (p. 10)

Here is how Nancy Boyles in an excellent Educational Leadership article defines it: “Essentially, close reading means reading to uncover layers of meaning that lead to deep comprehension.”

Thus, what “close reading” really means in practice is disciplined re-reading of inherently complex and worthy texts. As Tim Shanahan puts it in his helpful blog entry, “Because challenging texts do not give up their meanings easily, it is essential that readers re-read such texts,” while noting that “not all texts are worth close reading.”

The close = re-read + worthy assumption here is critical: we assume that a rich text simply cannot be understood and appreciated by a single read, no matter how skilled and motivated the reader.

(Sources: https://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu/pages/how-do-close-reading

https://www.teachthought.com/literacy/what-close-reading-actually-means/)

Week 2: Ground Work (Historical, Cultural Connections to Land, Food and Farming) Continued:

Lecture/Content:

The Color of Food: Stories of Race, Resilience, and Farming, by Natasha Bowens.

Ms. Bowens writes:

"I didn't come from a farming family, but I know my ancestors did. Down in South Carolina, they knew what it meant to eat well and grow okra with their own chicken waste fertilizer. But they didn't call it "organic." Nor did the first stewards of this soil, before their land was taken. They showed the pilgrims how to grow food what golden treasures hid beneath those husks. So where are they now?" (2).

Close-Read: Who is Bowens looking for? What signs does she have to know her family's history with farming the land? What pain does she express as she questions the treatment of her ancestors?

"The farmers markets in D.C. were everywhere but in communities of color, as were the good grocery stores for that matter. The urban farms and community gardens sprouting up all over the place might have been in some Black and Latina neighborhoods, but they weren't necessarily run by the folks from the neighborhood or even accessible to them. Any exceptions to that, I would find out, were just not getting the same visibility . . . I wanted to know where to find the permaculture workshops led by the farmers of color we needed as our mentors. I wondered where all the books on Amazon were that held knowledge and wisdom our ancestors had passed down" (3).

Close Read: What does Bowens observe about farmers markets and community gardens? What questions or ownership, autonomy and visibility does she pursue? Who does Bowens want to learn from?

"America has been trying to forget it's agrarian routes since industrialization took everyone off the farm . . . Society still loved to romanticize and honor the American farmer. So I couldn't help but ask why faces like mine weren't showing up in those Super Bowl commercials or in the rest of the media's portrayal of agriculture" (3).

Critical Questions: What is media? What is mainstream or mass media? What is media's history? Who owns major media outlets? Who owns and runs the media we consume daily? How can media present bias or discriminatory representations of society? How can media skew, divide, or misinform mainstream society? How can media be untruthful? How can media create fear or violence? How can media control society?

Bowens poses her own critical thinking questions to consider context, history, sentiment, research, and present and future implications: "I started thinking, "Are people of color being excluded from this food and farm movement? Are we simply not on the farm anymore? What caused our departure from the farm? Or are we staying off the farm by choice?"(3).

***Content Warning*** The passages below focus on the history of enslaved Africans and the violence of slavery. The content is intended to inform us of particular aspects of this history related to land and farming. As much as possible, please be mindful of your self care and give yourself time to process this material.

"As descendants of African slaves, we do have an ugly history with farming. I think of my own family history. Both sides of my family are coincidentally from the same tiny town outside of Greenville, South Carolina - a state through which 80 percent of African slaves entered this country. A few years ago, I discovered that my mother's European American ancestors bought my father's African American ancestors to work their fields. The Colemans (my mother's family) literally owned the Bowens (my father's family). As a product of the two families' reunion, it's hard not to think about that history" (4)

"I'm literally the product of ownership and oppression reuniting, as if to rewrite the story" (VIII).

"The thought kept me conflicted about my new love for farming. Was I returning to a trade my ancestors worked to free me of? Or was I bringing back a powerful connection to the land that my generation has lost?" (4)

Close-Read: How does Bowens express her conflict around farming and her ancestry? How does history impact Bowens relationship to farming? What questions does this context lead Bowens to consider?

Consider: How does Bowens envision the pre-colonial and pre-slavery societies, lives, cultures, values, practices and beliefs of her ancestors? How does she operate from this focus as she embraces farming? How does this focus allow her to embrace farming?

Compare the passage above to this quotation from James Baldwin:

"I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all." (Notes of a Native Son)

How do both Baldwin and Bowens reach for a context, history, and analysis of the present that hold the complexity and fullness of their being?

Compare both of these passages (Baldwin and Bowens) to this poem by Nayyirah Waheed:

"If we

wanted

people of color

could

burn the world down

for what

have experienced.

are experiencing.

but

we don't.

- how stunningly beautiful that our sacred respect for the earth. for life. is deeper than our rage."

Consider: How also does Waheed envision the values, beliefs and practices of a pre-colonial, pre-slavery, world where her sacred connection to the earth and to life outweighs the violence of systems of oppression? What is Waheed's message and how does it connect to the above quotations from Bowens and Baldwin?

With an emphasis on the envisioning, focusing and emphasis on a pre-colonial, pre-slavery connection to the land and farming for Black people and People of Color, again watch the poets, Elizabeth Acevedo and Liza Jesse Peterson. Evaluate message of the poets through this "lens," or with the awareness of societies, civilizations, cultures, peaceful communities, values, and sustainable practices of Black people and People of Color before systems of colonization and slavery.