I had been working on the newest book in my Culinary Crossroads series, where Jamaal was supposed to return home—to the States and the old South.
I thought it would be simple.
A return to where it all began.
A pilgrimage from the polished kitchens of Manila to the front porches, fields, and kitchens that shaped so many of us long before we ever touched a passport.
I thought I was writing about food.
But the deeper I dug, the more I realized that it was never just food.
It was survival.
It was remembrance.
It was resistance disguised as Sunday dinner.
I read everything I could find.
The recipes were there, sure.
But what kept catching me, snagging me like thorns on an old fence line, were the traditions.
Not just what we ate but how we ate.
Why we seasoned the way we did.
Why were our celebrations, mourning, and rituals around food and music crafted in ways no cookbook could fully explain?
It started long before we were “we” in any way we would recognize now—
on the plantations,
where bits and pieces of fading memories were passed down by those brought here, enslaved, stolen, stripped, but not erased.
They blended what they remembered with what little they had.
Cornmeal. Greens. Off-cuts and castoffs.
They made necessity taste like something more than survival.
They made it taste like home.
And over generations, through sheer will and stubborn brilliance, we built something uniquely ours.
Not just in the food but in the music,
the way we buried our dead,
the way we married our loved ones,
and the way we danced when the sun went down and the cotton fields emptied.
These traditions aren’t static.
They are not museum pieces under glass.
They are living and breathing things—regional and even tribal, depending on where your people ended up.
That phrase kept echoing in my mind:
“Where your people from.”
The old folks would ask you that when they met you.
After you named whatever city you lived in now—Detroit, Chicago, Kansas City—they’d look deeper, waiting for the real answer.
They were talking about the South.
Not the city, but the state.
The county.
The plantation.
The place that owned your ancestors.
It was a question about roots.
(Writing that even now feels like swallowing glass.)
The place that owned your ancestors.
So many years later, and it’s still hard to say.
Still hard to look at without flinching.
And then came the “Great Migration,” or as some called it, “The Great Exodus.”
We left with almost nothing.
No land. No wealth. No easy road.
But we took what mattered.
We carried our recipes.
We carried our songs.
We carried the parts of ourselves that they could not steal, whip out of us, or erase.
And for decades, it sustained us.
Soul Food. Soul Music.
Names born not in marketing rooms but in living rooms, storefront churches, and kitchens where steam and sorrow rose together.
And now?
Now, the word “Soul” feels almost quaint.
Almost forgotten.
Funny, isn’t it?
What slavery couldn’t kill, freedom quietly erased.
In chasing new beginnings, we risk losing the old songs.
The taste of real cornbread.
The sound of a mother’s hum in the kitchen.
The wisdom tucked into the folds of a handwritten recipe card.
As I write Jamaal’s story, I realize I’m writing my own.
Our own.
The story of a people who carried more than pain.
We carried genius.
We carried grace.
We carried soul.
And it’s on us—not the history books, not the tourists looking for “authenticity”—to remember what we made from nothing.
And to keep making it while we still can.
Before the last song fades.
Before the last plate is cleared.
Before the last story goes untold.
By Kyle Hayes
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