Meet IJ's Newest Board Member: Maryann Connolly!

Intercultural Journeys is thrilled to welcome Maryann Connolly as the newest member of the Board of Directors.

Maryann first attended an Intercultural Journeys’ event in 2019, and has been an avid supporter ever since. In her professional life, Maryann has 30 years of experience as a psychotherapist, and while she is now in private practice, she has worked with institutions throughout the Philadelphia and Delaware region. Maryann is also a volunteer with Fair Districts PA, which works to change the way that Pennsylvania draws its districts, and with Protect and Elect, a PA-based nonprofit that works to help elect candidates who represent and protect democratic values and are committed to making Pennsylvania more equitable and inclusive. Maryann holds a Master of Social Service from Bryn Mawr Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research, as well as a Bachelor of Arts degree from University of Massachusetts, and completed Phase One Training from the Racial Equity Institute. Maryann is a proud 30-year Philadelphia resident and an avid hiker.

"I am so excited to join Intercultural Journeys as a member of the board,” Maryann said. “I feel so passionately about this work: It is art that needs to be seen. The stories are incredibly vibrant, alive, and important, all told in such a beautiful and compelling way. I am so glad to help amplify this work in Philadelphia."

Board Chair Renee Garcia shared, "We are delighted to welcome Maryann to the board of directors. Her enthusiasm, interest, and love of this work is tangible, and her work gathering and building community speaks straight to the heart of Intercultural Journeys' mission."

Behind-the-Scenes: Meet Mervin Toussaint

Mervin Toussaint — musician, educator, and arts administrator extraordinaire — joins Talie for the first Table Sessions of the 2023-24 season on November 16 and 17. As we get ready for these Sessions, Mervin spoke with IJ’s executive director, and shared a little more about his process of creation, his music, and his hopes for the upcoming Sessions. Read on for more about Mervin, and don’t forget to get your tickets for the November event!

Tell me about yourself.

I'm an artist — and we tend to wear a million hats! I work as an arts administrator and teacher, and I'm a performer, composer, and arranger. The throughline I see through all of those things is impact: How can I impact my students? The constituents that I serve as an administrator? How can I impact the people who come to listen to me play? How can I help the musicians around me? How can I help my community? It's the driving force behind my career and my music.

How would you describe your music?

I'm Haitian, and I was always surrounded by music growing up - my mom sang hymns around the house, but I found everything full of music. When she would crush garlic in the mortar and pestle, the rhythm was so clear. That finds its way into my music, and I always wonder: How can I leave someone with a little piece of myself? It creates a feedback loop — you experience the world, create art that's a synthesized response to the world, and then you share that back out. It's hard to create something actually new, but if you think of the word, "originality," you start with "origin," or, where does this come from? The biggest thing we can add to music is ourselves. While these things may have been done before, it's never been done in the way that I create.

My music needs to feel like me and needs to feel alive with drama and dynamics and vibrancy. Humans are dynamic beings, changing from moment to moment, and I want my music to feel empathetic. My Haitian roots show up in my music in rhythms and shapes, as does jazz, a genre I'm deeply in love with, hip hop and Black musical genres. This wide variety of influences and styles meld together, and it gives the people I'm playing with a chance to add themselves into the music, too. 

Who's your musical hero?

All of my musical heroes have an obsessive commitment to being themselves and making their voice come out. There are the greats, like John Coltrane and Charlie Parker, and my mentor, Haitian American saxophonist Godwin Louis. But I'm also inspired by the people I make music with on a regular basis — including Talie, who's one of my musical heroes. 

What's your hope for this Table Session with Talie?

I want people to leave with something special. You know that feeling, on certain Sundays at church, when there's a particularly good service, or the music was really great, and you leave with a feeling of contentment — an "Ahhhhh, I needed this today." I want people to feel nourished at the end of the night, filled with energy and the ability to tackle whatever's next.

Don’t miss Mervin on November 16 and 17 for The Table Sessions, held in Southwest Philadelphia at Bartrams Garden.

Behind-the-Scenes: Meet Talie

Photo: Naomieh Jovin.

Haitian singer/songwriter and guitarist Nathalie Cerin (you may know her as Talie!) is headlining the first Table Sessions of the 2023-24 season on November 16 and 17. As we get ready for these Sessions, Talie chatted with IJ’s executive director, and shared a little more about her background, her music, and her conception of the upcoming Sessions. Read on for more about Talie, and don’t forget to get your tickets for the November event!

Tell me about yourself.

My name is Nathalie Cerin, and I go by Talie when I'm singing — it's been my nickname since I was a baby. I'm Haitian, born and raised between Port-Au-Prince and Philadelphia, but I've spent most of my life here. My family moved to Philadelphia when I was 10 months old, as my parents had scholarships to attend Eastern University. While we were here, there was a coup in Haiti, and the president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, fled to exile. Aristide had been a hero for my parents, and with mass violence towards Aristide's supporters, my parents couldn't return home. You can actually follow my  immigration story by following Aristide — I lived in Haiti from 7-17, but had to return to the states when Aristide was exiled again.

How does that emerge in your art making?

I have a very specific sound — a combination of all these cultures that made me. Growing up, my mom played piano and guitar, but I only started playing my guitar senior year of college because I missed her. When I started playing guitar, I started writing songs to practice chords — but every song that poured out of me was in Kreyòl. It was as if my brain didn't want to write in English on the guitar. 

I make music that is soft and pretty, and mostly in Kreyòl because I'm trying to stay connected to Haiti. I sing a lot of folk music and folk songs. Folk songs are really special — they belong to the whole collective of the community. So I sing Haitian folks songs, but in the style of someone who grew up in Philly. 

I also play a classical nylon string guitar. My mother comes from Cap-Haitien, a city full of musicians. It's not uncommon to find people who play guitar. In general, we don't do a lot of strumming. Haitian guitarists mostly finger pick with a lot of individual strings — nylon strings are good for that. I play my guitar very much like my mom — like someone who was raised by a lady from Cap-Haitien, but I sing like someone who was obsessed with Lauryn Hill.

I am also the executive editor of an online magazine that is published in English and Kreyòl, for folks who are trying to understand Haiti. I'm an immigrant woman in the states, trying to make sense of the life I'm able to live. Trying to make sense of why I couldn't be a thriving adult in my own country — something I'm very resentful of. I want my art making to reknit these pieces, and in what I do, I always ask: How can I preserve, remember, and stay connected to my home?

What does that connection to Haitians and Haitian culture look like in Philadelphia?

Philly is an interesting place for Haitian culture. It's usually not the first stop for immigrants — that's usually NYC or Florida — but there's now a large Haitian population here, and many people who've moved here after experiencing NYC prices! When people move here and they're looking for Haitian community, what they tend to find is the Protestant church — and then they tend to become Protestant even if they weren't in Haiti. It's a very church-y scene — and then there's also Haitian dance nights at Red Wine, a nightclub. But Haitian events that are more traditional or folkloric or acknowledge the existence of Vodou — you don't really find that in Philly. 

Will this influence what we experience at your Table Sessions in November?

I always wanted to bring a certain type of Haitian event here — more for someone curious about the culture. I want the evenings to have the coziness of a West Philly house show melded into what it's like to be at Christmas at my mom's family, where every uncle has a guitar and we'll all break out into song. I hope people come and discover a side of Haiti that they didn't even know to look for.

Don’t miss Talie on November 16 and 17 for The Table Sessions, held in Southwest Philadelphia at Bartrams Garden.

Meet IJ's Newest Board Member: Elethia Gay

Intercultural Journeys is thrilled to announce Elethia Gay as the newest member of the Board of Directors.

With a Master's in Business Administration and certifications in wellness coaching, personal training, and yoga, Elethia has dedicated over twenty years of her life to refining her expertise across diverse sectors, including corporate, government, education, and wellness. She founded Alexander Q and created their Roots to Wellness program, which focuses on helping active moms to reset, restore, and rise from their roots. An active participant in the nonprofit world, Elethia has worked with Dress for Success, Monster Worldwide, Rachel's Challenge, and Art of Life Charities, where she has been a speaker, trainer, and board member. Whether it's through her Roots to Wellness program or her involvement in various nonprofit organizations, Elethia consistently strives to empower individuals and enhance their overall well-being.

Elethia shared: "Intercultural Journeys bridges the gap between healing and art. It's what our society needs. I grew up in an artistic family and witnessed firsthand how creativity can heal and allow for self-expression without boundaries."

Renee Garcia, chair of the Board of Directors, adds: "We are delighted to welcome Elethia, and are excited to utilize her people-focused expertise, her deep love of the arts, and her dedication to the wider Philadelphia community."

Behind-the-Scenes: Meet Esto No Tiene Nombre production designer Nia Benjamin

To bring Esto No Tiene Nombre to life, we worked with a team of creative artists and makers. Today on the blog, meet Nia Benjamin, the production designer for Esto No Tiene Nombre — and IJ’s very own Director of Creative Projects! While the live performance happened in June, you have one more chance to see the visual world Nia created on Friday, October 13 at the first screening of Esto No Tiene Nombre!

How did you come to Philadelphia, and why do you make the city your home?

I've lived in Philly for 11 years now. I moved here from West Palm Beach, FL in 2012 for college (I graduated from the University of the Arts). I've stayed in Philly because I believe Philly to be an artist's city, with an incredible legacy of contributions from artists of color. I think I'll continue to stay in Philly because of the people, because of the legacies of organizing, and because of the deep familial connections I have made with so many incredible people. I think Philly is a place for deep thinkers, deep feelers, and people who are in deep relationship with the communities they care about. Those are my kinds of people.

What caught your imagination about working on Esto No Tiene Nombre?

As a queer person, as a Black person, as a person born in the Caribbean, I have inherited so many forgotten histories. It takes a lot to remember these histories, and because not only are they purposefully hidden...but they often are not well documented. Conversations with elders, with culture bearers, with our ancestors is the way we remember who we are. I was drawn to this show because of that. I am drawn to doing everything I can to understand myself, and to understand those who have lived, lost, and loved to allow me the right to be myself...fully.

How do you go about translating a literary work into a visual world?

As we were doing the research for Esto, and as Denice was sharing with us the content of the interviews, I was struck by the pictures, the articles, the pins and buttons and jackets -- the ephemera, that serves as evidence of lives lived and love shared. When thinking about how to support Denice's storytelling, I felt that it was important to make these women's existences tangible. To have photos of them. To have their belongings on the stage. To have their presences in the audience. There are tons of nods to the women of Esto, both in the projections I designed, in the books and paperwork lining the stage, in the objects strewn around the space. The objective was to make their lives tangible. They are more than just stories.

In that way it was quite easy. It was more a chance to nerd out and do research which I do think is a big part of my artistic practice. This was a process of learning by listening, and letting these incredible women of Esto take up the space they have been so denied.

When you're not doing work with IJ, where can we find your work?

When I'm not at IJ, I make original works of experimental performance with my company, Ninth Planet. You can find out more about our work at ninthplanet.org or on our Instagram @ninth__planet.

Behind-the-Scenes: Meet ESTO co-creator Alex Torra

To bring Esto No Tiene Nombre to life, we worked with a team of thoughtful and talented artists. Today on the blog, meet Alex Torra, the director/co-creator of Esto No Tiene Nombre. And if you’d like to hear more from Alex, don’t miss him on Friday, October 13 at the panel discussion following the screening for Esto No Tiene Nombre!

How did you come to Philadelphia, and why do you make the city your home?
I came to Philly for college, and in my senior year, I was lucky to get cast alongside a bunch of other college-aged folks in a Pig Iron show. That then led to me stage managing their production of SHUT EYE that we then toured to Ireland, Edinburgh, and Poland (twice!). It was such an amazing experience, and I loved my Pig Iron people. After the tours, I left Philly for grad school and ended up in NYC trying to make it as a freelance director. Something didn’t feel right…I wasn't happy about how my art-life was working. Then I found out about a fellowship through the Princess Grace Foundation, and I asked Pig Iron to apply with me, and they said yes, and this wild opportunity worked out and I came back to Philly as Pig Iron’s Associate Artistic Director in Fall 2007. And then I stayed! I was just so taken by the art that was being made here, and I felt relieved that art-making here wasn't defined by competition, and I met some incredible artists who felt like real co-conspirators. I could feel traction artistically and in the community I was trying to build.

What caught your imagination about working on Esto No Tiene Nombre?
Sadly, it’s very unusual for me to be working on queer Latinx work, and that was the first thing that drew me in. I'd been dreaming up a project about queerness and Latinidad -- but it was pretty unformed, and then this came along. I met Denice, and I knew immediately that I wanted to work with her (what a charm bomb!), and I resonated so hard with the idea of building a queer heritage. Like Denice, I don't have queer Latinx elders in my life. I’ve been trying out this phrase lately: I'd like to see myself in the past. I found Denice’s quest to be really appealing, and something that mattered to me too.

When devising a new work, where do you start in moving the stories from the page to the stage?
There's a few different approaches to devising. Denice is a natural performer, and already has such skill as a performer with a real presence on stage. She's also a natural mimic -- there's an actor in there! --  she can imitate others really easily. We talked about the different ways to give voice to stories -- we talked about how she might insert herself into history or how she might embody characters or how these stories resonated off her own story and how that might be presented on stage. We explored the traditions of interview-based solo work, and then we created our own ideas around how she might represent these stories. We made a bunch of material based on these explorations, and we put that material on cards, like 3 x 5 cards, and we did a best guess at a possible order, and we got lucky because the first order worked well! It had a real emotional logic to it, and that first order became the spine of the show. It was really exciting to make a structure that didn't always signal to you where it was headed -- it, instead, was built to be experienced by Denice on stage in real time, for her to experience. We never announced where we were headed, but we hoped the audience could feel the shift she was going through.

If you really look at the structure, Denice gets closer and closer (to the material or maybe to herself)-- she's on the outside as an interviewer, then casts herself in the stories, then becomes the people, and then, she becomes herself.

Do you have a wish and a hope for the future of the show?
Wow, we really need some queer art right now, and I hope this show can tour. We queer folks need ways to feel strength and connection and history, and Denice's words and presence speak to a lot of people and is so powerful. I really think this show should tour all over -- there are people in every community who could benefit from encountering this work.

When you're not doing work with IJ, where can we find your work? And what are you excited about working on next?

I'm the Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Team Sunshine Performance.. Right now, we’re developing THE GREAT AMERICAN GUNSHOW, and it will happen in communities across the country. In this work, we interview people about guns/gun culture, safety, and community, and we take the responses and shape them into a performance for that community. We had the pilot performance in central PA last year, with the Philadelphia version premiering in 2025. I'm also currently working on a bananas 24-year project called THE SINCERITY PROJECT, where the same artists make an installment of the show every 2-3 years. Installment #5 -- our 10-year anniversary -- happens December 2024. I've also got collaborations with Shavon Norris, Sarah Sanford, and Eli Nixon coming up in the near future.

Songs of Freedom: The Evolution of Son Jarocho

original photo courtesy of Interminable

by Ximena Violante and Tahnee Jackson

The port city of Veracruz in Mexico was a major point of disembarkation for nearly 120,000 enslaved Africans in the early years of the Transatlantic Slave Trade, from 1517 to 1650. From Veracruz and other points along the southeastern coast of Mexico, Africans were trafficked to other Spanish settlements throughout the Caribbean, South America, and the colonies of what would become the United States. Along with the rise of the Middle Passage however, many others took the opportunity to leave the Old World for what they believed would be a new one — colonists and refugees alike — and eventually shifted the cultural landscape of the region over time.

Ximena Violante of Interminable describes how the blending of colonial and cultural forces gave rise to the unique musical style of son jarocho:

Son jarocho is a musical tradition from the Sotavento region of Mexico, which includes southern Veracruz as well as parts of Oaxaca, Puebla, and Tabasco.  It emerged during colonial times, when Veracruz was a central port city. Colonialism and the Trans-Atlantic slave trade brought together people who were West Africans of Yoruba, Bantú, and Mandinga descent, indigenous Nahua, Popoluca, Mixe, Mazateco, Zapoteco, and Chinanteco peoples, Spanish Catholic settlers as well as refugees of Jewish and Arab descent.   

Under the Spanish Inquisition, there was an attempt to silence spiritualities that fell outside the Catholic faith either through syncretism or outright prohibition. Through music, people found a way to hold on to and maintain their practices, and son jarocho became a mixture of many cultures resisting colonial assimilation. When drums were prohibited, people transferred the percussion to their feet and danced zapateado on wooden platforms they called tarimas.  Another central instrument is the jarana, whose name has Arabic roots and is an adaptation of the baroque guitar, but carved out of a block of wood in the style of indigenous instruments, and which plays African and indigenous rhythms.  

Today, this music is played around the world, including here in Philly with the Son Revoltura collective that Ximena helped start 8 years ago!  Communities keep the tradition alive through the fandango, a celebration of this music similar to a jam session where many folks gather around and improvise off of well-known sones.  Similar to how jazz standards have pre-established melodies and changes that allow for musicians to join in and add their own interpretation, sones allow for communication, creativity, and new possibilities to emerge each time they're played.  And the vast similarities between jazz, blues, and son jarocho are not accidental –  they are a direct result of being musical styles of the African diaspora, músicas campesinas (music made by farmworkers and laborers), and music that was central to surviving and resisting the colonial order.  

Through original music, Interminable explores those common threads that exist between all of the musics that have influenced us - jazz, funk, rock, son jarocho, classical, blues, and hip-hop. 

West African influence is deeply woven throughout the cultural fabric of wherever its diaspora has landed, from the dance patterns following the drums on Mexican tarimas and in Puerto Rico’s bomba y pleña to the syncretism of Catholicism with beliefs from the Yoruba, Bantu, Akan, and other African ethnic groups have evolved into faiths like Santería, Lucumí, and Candomblé. 
Diasporic evidence shows itself in the food, like mashed plantains reminiscent of fufu or Senegal’s bissap becoming the beloved agua de jamaica found in taquerias worldwide, and as shown in musical culture of Central and South America and even in the Southern US – from the evolution of the quijada or donkey jawbone rattle setting the beat in Afro-Peruvian music, Mexico’s son jarocho, and in the “ol’ jawbone” of early Southern minstrel shows to the evolution of jazz, blues, rock, and hip-hop – Interminable’s expansive sound pays homage to a shared ancestral culture and the many pathways taken to arrive there.

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Lunar Cartography: Mapping Ancestry with Mel Hsu

original photo credit: kenzi crash

by Tahnee Jackson

“Stories told across splintered languages” – the phrase evokes an immediate sense of loss and longing and belonging, of threading together definitions found in disparate dictionaries.

Part of my work as Communications and Marketing Manager at IJ is taking a deeper dive into the inspirations and motivations behind our artists’ work, and internalizing their stories to bring them into fuller context for our audiences. As a descendent of immigrants myself, it reminds me of the ways my culture continues to honor ancient traditions while still being unable to truly map out their origins; the word my culture uses for the act of eating is directly linked to the word for a staple food across the breadth of West Africa, and a food I still consume to this day.

The art of cartography, or mapmaking, begins with surveying the land and measuring distances, equating hands or cubits to miles and carving borders where landscape once reigned supreme. The claiming of borders and creation of nation-states has become a colonial act, and one enacted throughout the Global South by empirical forces.

Taiwan is one such country, land bordered on all sides by seas and hemmed in by the constrictions of colonization dating back to the 1600s. In discussing borders however, the pieces of the land that are often forgotten are the peoples and languages of those gathered and separated by arbitrary divisions, and those divisions often manifest along familial lineages unseen by history books.

Even within the current geopolitical climate, Taiwan’s sovereignty is still hotly debated, tiptoed around and through. 2022-23 season artist Mel Hsu takes on this rugged epigenetic terrain and scattered linguistic geography in her piece Letters to the Moon, a soundbath in honor of those who made me. Mel describes the impact of colonization on her family’s genealogy:

“The island of Taiwan has been passed between the hands of different global powers for centuries. While several generations of my family all grew up on the same land, the multiple shifts between Chinese, Dutch and Japanese governments caused the land and the lives upon it to be completely re-coded with new languages, cultural expectations and history class curriculums every few decades.

Multiple generations of Taiwanese and Indigenous people were forced to speak a new language with the entrance of a new government. Depending on who was in power, native tongues were relegated to being spoken only at home and forbidden to be spoken in public. 

A decade ago, I embarked on a journey of exploring the impact of linguistic colonization within four generations of my family. My great-grandparents’ first words were in Taiwanese. My grandmother writes her poetry in Japanese, my parents dream in Mandarin. My sister and I are schooled in English grammar.”

So what does reconstructing the linguistic pathways that connect memory and history through a family’s lineage look like? How does mapping out ancestry sound? Mel’s journey towards that purpose took time and persistence:

“For one year, I conducted interviews with my grandmothers, my parents, and my sister. My original hypothesis was a condemnation of the ways in which colonization causes intergenerational rupture. I was grieving and angry. I wanted to be able to read my grandmother’s poetry - I felt that war, foreign occupation and white supremacy had stripped me of that sacred privilege.

Through the interview process, what was illuminated for me was the underground ecosystem of linguistic mycelia that my family created for ourselves when we were stripped of words. What I found was resistance - we reached for one another despite having different vocabularies. We created our own languages, stronger languages, languages of family that no government could take away from us. The sharing of food, of music, of touch, of play, of grief, of migration, of dreams.

What I found was that my grandmother grew into Mandarin alongside my mother, my mother grows into English alongside me. We create our own familial vocabularies alongside each other.  Our mothers grow to find us in our mother tongues.”

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Mel Hsu (she/ 她 tā)  is a sonic painter of impossible worlds. As a multi-instrumentalist, Mel often ventures from her classical roots as a cellist into unexpected, cross-disciplinary collaborations. Rooted in Philadelphia, Mel’s restless spirit finds adventure across time zones and oceans as musical and administrative support for others who inspire her. Mel is a spreadsheet nerd, a slow reader, and a shameless instigator of kitchen dance parties. www.melaniehsu.com

MEET THE CHEF | An interview with Chef Nia Minard & IJ's Tahnee Jackson

IJ’s newest Communications and Marketing Manager Tahnee Jackson sat down with Chef Nia Minard of Our Mother’s Kitchens to discuss the culinary lineages and stories that are going into the menu for 2022-23 Season kick-off event, Table Sessions: Solomon Temple.

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Tahnee Jackson (TJ):

Could you tell me a little bit about the inspiration behind your culinary journey? 

Chef Nia Minard (CN):

Although I was born in Philadelphia, I grew up in the Mississippi Delta, Yazoo City to be precise; and so Southern Mississippi, Delta Black cookery is like my sweet spot. That’s where my Mom’s from and where I grew up, so that's where my palate is rooted -- in Mississippi Delta Black foodways.

And my palate since coming back to Philly for college— when I graduated from Drexel [University] you know— I just fell in love. Philadelphia is a great food town. I draw a lot of inspiration from a Black Diasporic cuisine. I love a lot of Liberian and West African food, foods from the continent. I love tracing the threads of, for instance, why everywhere you go, wherever there are Black people, there's red rice—that obviously has its roots in jollof rice. You can look at Black-American cuisine and find its roots in African diasporic cuisine. That's really where my inspiration comes from. I basically start from where I'm from in the South and then branch out from there. And a lot of that journey has taken me to other foods like— I love a lot of Korean food, so I will incorporate a lot of techniques and recipes and cooking styles from Korean cuisine into my cooking. 

For example, as much as I would love to have pork on the menu—cause I love pork—I know Black people in Philly don't eat pork. So I adapt a lot of my recipes—and yeah I can do the fancy Michelin star plating—but I really think there's something beautiful in cooking food that looks like food, and food that is presented as such, and is unpretentious and just delicious.

And you know, I kind of hate that idea that became very popular like, five, eight years ago of “elevating a dish.” To me one of the pieces or throughlines in the work that I do: I do a lot of research projects with food, and diasporic cuisine is just to state that we are enough. I'm affirming my Blackness to me and the larger world doing the work that I do through Black foodways and cookery. To me it doesn't need to be elevated, because it's already at the elevation. It's always sophisticated. 

To me, there was a sophistication to the way that my grandmother would talk about how my great-grandmother was such a skilled chef that no matter what she was cooking, all her food was done at the same time! She just knew how to time and multitask and get everything done and out in a reasonable time. I teach culinary at Simon-Gratz High School and very much impress upon my students that the way I'm teaching you is not the only way to do it! The reason why I want to teach you, you know, don't use a fork to whisk eggs—even if that’s how you do it at home—is that we have access to professional tools, and you are in a career technical education program. 

So I'm trying to get you to a level that if you choose to go to culinary school, or you choose to work in a kitchen at some point in your life or career, you have the language of the profession. So people take you seriously, which is something that is not always afforded to us and Brown and Black folk. Let’s at least know the rules, so we can break them, right? It's about setting that standard. It’s about preserving and creating identity. 

I really try to tell the story of us you know, through food. 

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Chef Nia D. Minard (she/her) is a Philadelphia native and an educator with Our Mother's Kitchens — a food justice and storytelling collective centered around the culinary traditions of the African Diaspora as witnessed through the writings of seminal Black women authors, such as Zora Neale Hurston and Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor.