Yesterday, I went to Barnes & Noble searching for the Juneteenth-inspired cookbook Watermelon and Red Birds. They didn’t have it.
Instead, the bookseller pointed me to Ralph Ellison’s second novel, Juneteenth, which the American writer spent 40 years working on and never saw to fruition before his passing. The version we have now is thanks to scholar and editor John F. Callahan, who pared down Ellison’s manuscript from thousands of pages. I’m only a couple of chapters in, but I appreciate these words in the introduction:
On many levels, Juneteenth [Meaning the book] is a narrative of liberation, literally a celebration of June 19, 1865, the day two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation was decreed when Union troops landed in Galveston, Texas, and their commanding officer told the weeping, cheering slaves that they were free. The delay, of course, is symbolic acknowledgment that liberation is the never-ending task of self, group, and nation and that, to endure, liberation must be self-achieved and self-achieving.
It’s that delayed liberation I think about the most, how the enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, had been free for two years and didn’t know it. This year’s Juneteenth feels especially bittersweet, as the idea of freedom continues to be just beyond reach. Certainly, the civilians in Palestine, who have suffered the most in the current war (genocide), aren’t free. Neither are the people in the Congo, Sudan, or Haiti. Meanwhile, our government officials are attempting to roll the clocks back to an era before Black studies or Roe v. Wade.
To a lesser extent, I’m looking at my own life. Earlier this year, I moved out of my apartment and quit my day job. Now that I’ve completed the fellowship at Monticello, I have nowhere and everywhere to be. How do I use this newly attained freedom? And with what means? What I really want is to travel the country collecting stories. To wake up in the morning and be free to write. On this Juneteenth, I was able to do the latter. I don’t know how the rest of the story will play out.
The trip to Barnes & Noble wasn’t entirely unsuccessful. I was also pointed to Gullah Geechee Home Cooking, filled with recipes and history told by Emily Meggett, the matriarch of South Carolina’s Edisto Island. Skimming the pages, I found a recipe for Muscadine wine. Seeing my Juneteenth book in tow, the person at checkout shyly asked if I’d look at a Black artist’s greeting cards that had been sitting on the shelf for a year. I bought three of them.
What else I’m reading:
On Juneteenth, a six-chapter book on Texas’s Black history told by historian Annette Gordon-Reed, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Hemingses of Monticello
Making Fine Wine in Palestine Despite It All, an article that Henna Bakshi spent months working on before it was published by Wine Enthusiast
What I’m drinking:
Today’s holiday (Or any day this summer) might call for Kalchē’s Saudade, a white sparkling co-ferment, which I wrote about in last week’s post
Speaking of Muscadine, I’m excited about the bone-dry expressions being produced by Plēb Urban Winery in North Carolina
The rest of today’s agenda is undetermined. Perhaps, I’ll keep writing, reading Ellison’s book, or go enjoy the sunshine.
Sending you wishes of freedom.