Chelle A. Carter-Wilson
You Treat Me to A Feast: If I Love You, I’ll Feed You by Chelle A. Carter-Wilson
Call me a djeli.
My Daddy was dark chocolate, a fire-filled, afro-adorned Baptist preacher, card-carrying member of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, and Princeton-educated theologian, fully aligned, with zero contradiction. He married a caramel-colored, college-educated woman born in the segregated American South, steeped in faith. I am the full inheritor of their best gifts. Raised in a home where social justice was a Christian value, Jesus had always been radical, and Black was beautiful, Black Liberation was never part of my theology, Black Liberation was my theology. Made in the perfect, precise Image of God, how could the Divine be anything besides Black like me?
Well, I once refused to eat a chicken because its feathers were black.
Gifts, insights, and privilege notwithstanding, I remain watchful. Fail to be vigilant, and you no longer require an oppressor. You internalize the poison that racism is, and fully unaware, administer it routinely to yourself.
A pieced quilt, my legacy is indelibly imprinted by the laying on of every forefather and mother’s holy hands. I am my ancestors’ wildest dream; genetically African yet American by birth, descended from royalty and enslaved by colonizers, I am the great-great-granddaughter of the captured, never conquered.
Part psalm, part prose, some spun magic, this 40k word memoir is a spoken word performance – Bread & Wine meets Soul Food. Spirit-divination, spice, and Grace, these stories decode my faith, family food, and our cultural traditions, along with the lessons they taught me.
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