Food Inheritance

Photo Credit: Dylan Hendricks

Food Inheritance by Michelle Petty-Grue

Collard greens aren't the same without 

smoky neck bones and unctuous 

ham hocks. I've tried making them without these 

queens because I was taught from a young age that

fat would steal my crown, 

diminish my own royalty.

Fat on the body and fat in the mouth were equal 

transgressions.

Standing in my reclaimed nobility, 

I invite the collard greens back and all the "bad fat" 

foods that gained those labels for little better reason than 

Black people ate them. 

I invite back the memories of the five of us at the table, 

embodying the lyrics of that Babyface song – the simple 

times of yesterday.

Drowned out by diet culture, those collard greens tried to 

teach me and now I’m listening:

-               Eating for pleasure is more virtuous than using 

                 food to punish or alter ourselves. 

-               Eating ethnic food is good, especially your own. 

-               My diet doesn't need to be any more white than I do, and 

I don't need to be white.

Michelle Petty-Grue

Michelle Petty-Grue is a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She researches higher education pedagogy and writing studies through the lenses of intersectionality critical digital literacies. She has previously published in the fantasy journal Astral Waters Review, Zingara Poetry Review, the Expressionists Magazine of the Arts, and DASH Literary Journal. Feeding her creative energies and making space during motherhood and in her professional life has been a challenging pleasure.

IG: @michelle.p.art