Fostering Connections Through Food
How a Queer Black Woman is using afro-vegan cuisine to foster community
This past August, I got the chance to stop by KidnFro’s afro-vegan, soul food pop-up shop in Central Park. When speaking with her at the pop event, she mentions how her business is all about creating spaces for her customers to have more interpersonal conversations and learn more about Afro-veganism
Afro-veganism, according to Afro-vegansociety.org, is “a social justice movement led by vegans of African descent who share a common history of race-based oppression that gives us an innate understanding of how oppressive systems work. Afro-Vegans view veganism as both a viable solution to the current challenges that face our communities as well as a vehicle for resisting the systems that are currently exploiting the entire planet”.
When I approached, KidandFro at her pop-up, she sat underneath a couple of blankets on the grass while her packaged meals sat beside her and awaited customers. Soon, she was surrounded by Black women asking questions about the meals, eager to learn more about afro-veganism.
We started talking and sharing our experiences around social issues, our personal identities, and even goals and aspirations. It was at that moment that I noticed that KidnFro’s food catering business was doing much more than bringing afro-vegan meals to the Black community.
Her food was bringing individuals together to have honest conversations about our daily struggles. It was a space where Black queer and hetero women can sit down and be real with one another without over-explaining themselves.
When speaking to KidnFro about food bringing people together, she mentioned how she appreciated that her pop-up events have become a space for people like her to connect on a deep level.
“[We] just [sit and ] talk about our identities, which somehow ends up happening at every one of my pop-ups even if I don’t bring it up … which I think is a beautiful thing because we don’t talk about ourselves too often and it may be vain but, then again, it’s not because you’re able to connect with other people about similar things that you didn’t even think was going through their minds too,” said KidnFro.
In an article by CivilEats on the Black VegFest in NYC, Ethan Blake mentions how afro-veganism has a history in NYC. “Black vegans (and vegetarians) are an established diaspora community rooted in religious and cultural traditions. The Nation of Islam has always prescribed a vegetarian diet, the African Hebrew Israelites have led a global vegan campaign from their village in Israel since 1969, and Black humanitarian activists like Coretta Scott King, Angela Davis, and Dr. Amie Breeze Harper all followed and endorsed a vegan diet.”
It is important to note that for many low-income Black and Brown communities, there is a lack of access to healthy food choices and fresh food markets which makes it difficult for them to maintain a healthy diet, let alone a vegan/plant-based one.
With that in mind, KidandFro’s main mission is to influence the people in her community to make better food choices if possible and expose individuals to tasty plant-based food that’s good for them.
Tune in to learn more about my afternoon spent at KidnFro’s Afro-Vegan pop-up last summer here: (https://soundcloud.com/anempathswords/an-afternoon-with-kidandfro)
Interested in trying out afro-vegan meals? You can learn more about KidnFro’s catering at https://www.nourish-the-soul.com/
