{"id":118512,"date":"2017-11-23T13:00:58","date_gmt":"2017-11-23T18:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=118512"},"modified":"2017-11-24T12:41:01","modified_gmt":"2017-11-24T17:41:01","slug":"black-history-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/11\/23\/black-history-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Black History"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><i>The Paris Review staff is off in a\u00a0tryptophan-induced haze,\u00a0so\u00a0we&#8217;re reposting some of our favorite Thanksgiving pieces. Enjoy your holiday!<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"attachment_92270\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/9780374140342.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-92270\" class=\"wp-image-92270 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/9780374140342.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"393\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/9780374140342.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/9780374140342-300x197.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-92270\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">From the cover of\u00a0<i>Disgruntled<\/i>, Asali Solomon\u2019s debut novel.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Back in the early 1980s, no one at the mostly white elite prep school I attended had heard of Kwanzaa, which I\u2019d grown up celebrating instead of Christmas. This was a yearly hassle of explaining: yes, presents; no, Santa Claus. But\u00a0<em>absolutely\u00a0<\/em>no one had heard of\u00a0<em>Umoja Karamu<\/em>, \u201ca ritual for the black family\u201d that we observed at Thanksgiving. This one I never volunteered to explain. Black families who celebrated\u00a0<em>Umoja Karamu<\/em>\u00a0(Kiswahili for \u201cunity feast\u201d)\u2014and we were the only one I knew of\u2014were to trade in the ritual of senselessly stuffing ourselves for one in which we used food and words to reflect on the grim, glorious trajectory of black people in America, to recall the crimes of the \u201cgreedy one-eyed giant\u201d white man, and to keep the \u201cBlack Nation\u201d energized and focused, struggling toward liberation from racism.<\/p>\n<p>During\u00a0<em>Umoja Karamu<\/em>, which lived in a 1971 booklet (a mere two years older than I was) published by a fellow Philadelphian named Edward Sims, we sat at our special holiday table and took turns reading solemnly aloud from a pithy narrative of African American history that moved from the ancient kingdom of Mali to the Watts riots. Between readings, we ate a symbolic sequence of aggressively non-Thanksgiving foods, including black-eyed peas, rice, corn bread, and leafy greens, all served unseasoned, perhaps to make us more thoughtful. Blessedly, my mother always insisted on a normal holiday meal after\u00a0<em>Umoja Karamu<\/em>. But Edward Sims was certainly about his business. Each Thanksgiving, as I waited to get to the stuffing and gravy, I did indeed taste the suffering we read about. I experienced the \u201cbland and tasteless condition under which Black Folk lived during the slavery period\u201d in the form of unsalted white rice and chalky black-eyed peas. But happily, enduring\u00a0<em>Umoja Karamu<\/em>, unlike the suffering of the Black Nation, was a private shame, one about which my school friends knew nothing. That is, until I received a fifth-grade assignment to write an essay about family Thanksgiving traditions and to\u00a0<em>read it aloud<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/11\/24\/black-history\/\" target=\"_blank\">Read More &gt;&gt;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Paris Review staff is off in a\u00a0tryptophan-induced haze,\u00a0so\u00a0we&#8217;re reposting some of our favorite Thanksgiving pieces. Enjoy your holiday! &nbsp; Back in the early 1980s, no one at the mostly white elite prep school I attended had heard of Kwanzaa, which I\u2019d grown up celebrating instead of Christmas. This was a yearly hassle of explaining: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4393],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Black History by Asali Solomon<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Asali Solomon remembers her family\u2019s African American Thanksgiving tradition and the difficulty she had telling her white schoolmates about it.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/11\/23\/black-history-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Black History by Asali Solomon\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"November 23, 2017 \u2013 The Paris Review staff is off in a\u00a0tryptophan-induced haze,\u00a0so\u00a0we&#039;re reposting some of our favorite Thanksgiving pieces. Enjoy your holiday! &nbsp; Back\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/11\/23\/black-history-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-11-23T18:00:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2017-11-24T17:41:01+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/9780374140342.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"393\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Asali Solomon\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Asali Solomon\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/11\/23\/black-history-2\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/11\/23\/black-history-2\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Asali Solomon\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/819207211f3e265bbbebd44763ef8df3\"},\"headline\":\"Black History\",\"datePublished\":\"2017-11-23T18:00:58+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-11-24T17:41:01+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/11\/23\/black-history-2\/\"},\"wordCount\":389,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/11\/23\/black-history-2\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/9780374140342.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"First Person\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/11\/23\/black-history-2\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/11\/23\/black-history-2\/\",\"name\":\"Black History by Asali Solomon\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/11\/23\/black-history-2\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/11\/23\/black-history-2\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/9780374140342.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2017-11-23T18:00:58+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-11-24T17:41:01+00:00\",\"description\":\"Asali Solomon remembers her family\u2019s African American Thanksgiving tradition and the difficulty she had telling her white schoolmates about it.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/11\/23\/black-history-2\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/11\/23\/black-history-2\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/11\/23\/black-history-2\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/9780374140342.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/9780374140342.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/11\/23\/black-history-2\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Black History\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. 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