Voices of Lefferts is embarking on a new initiative, called Flatbush Eats: Food, Survival, and Celebration. Inspired by the 1930s Federal Writers’ Project’s collection, America Eats, Flatbush Eats aims to document the pleasures, traditions, and histories of food in our neighborhood, and explore a range of food-related issues, including inequitable access, hunger, mutual aid, gender, and environment.
Flatbush Eats is a multimedia storytelling project that we are developing in partnership with local groups, including CaribBeing, the Maple Street Community Garden, RTV Community Garden, Q Gardens, Seeds in the Middle, and the Jewish Food Society.
We will engage the community in writing workshops, oral history interviews, and a series of face-to-face (or virtual) public listening, author reading, and story circle events geared toward eliciting stories, recipes, knowledge, cultural histories, and celebrations of food.
The project will culminate in the publication of a special journal issue and an archive of written narratives, images, audio, and video.
I need to know how we celebrate our victories, our very survival. What did we want for dinner? What was good enough to commemorate our humanity?
NTOZAKE SHANGE
IF I CAN COOK/YOU KNOW GOD CAN