Letter From the Editor: Deluxe Food Edition
The following was originally published in the print and digital Deluxe Food Edition. Order a print or digital copy to support the only Palestinian magazine in the United States.
Our current era is defined by horror, but also the rise of Indigenous and oppressed peoples. You can feel it in the air, from Aotearoa to the lowcountry lands of the Cherokee, from the Arctic to Sudan. And Palestine is at the center of our decolonial uprising. Food – being the mechanism through which all life is sustained and the carrier of culture — is central to it all.
When I was asked to edit the Food Issue of Palestine in America, so many experiences went behind my emphatic yes: Hunting with North American Indigenous mentors on Pine Ridge Reservation, my maternal family’s history of enslavement in the South, seeing fields of cotton represent liberation on an Indigenous-owned farm on the Gila River Reservation, the violence I faced when I spoke out against Zionism and racism in my early 20s, and my friends crying as their family members were murdered by Israel in Gaza and the West Bank.
The central idea behind this issue then became a broad one, but one that connected all these experiences. How does Palestine and the diaspora attain food sovereignty amidst genocide and colonial dispossession? How does the Palestinian fight for food sovereignty mirror other Indigenous-led movements that center the land? And how can food become a tool of resistance? How does a seed become a sword?
As a food writer, I live in the tension of my career. I must highlight incredible — often exorbitantly priced — food to demonstrate the mastery of the culinary art form. Then, like whiplash, I must cover people who are being starved and deprived of food by colonial powers. Why does merging the two in any meaningful way feel so difficult? Why are we encouraged to celebrate culinary genius when a Michelin-star chef is the face of it, but not people like Ahmad Aaed, an 8-year-old boy planting in Gaza? Why are we pushed to silence about restaurants that participate in culinary Zionism, and not allowed to highlight chefs like Reem Assil and Fadi Kattan? Why are we encouraged to learn everything we can about a French technique of cooking, spending months of research, but dissuaded from discovering what happened to the restaurateurs, farmers, and home cooks under the rubble? And why must we denounce the Palestinian resistance when food itself is resistance?
Food writers everywhere — including many of the contributors in this issue — must reckon with censorship, blacklisting, and pressure when attempting to do the cultural work they’re called to. Revelation of our mission is the easy part; it is the realization of our mission that is most difficult. However, it is our duty and our honor as culture workers to do whatever we can and whatever we must, to fulfill that mission.
Writers and readers need spaces like this magazine, where decolonial ideas infiltrate the fluff and begin to create art that can spark a revolution and sustain it. I and the contributors of the issue have learned to embrace the tension. We sit with it, we confront it, and only then can we begin to do real work. And out of our collective grief, I hope we contribute to a new, growing mandate for food journalism, where anti-imperialism is the expectation, where writers are fearless, and meet this moment with courage.
I am beyond grateful for the gift of editing this issue. I am grateful to the writers here, all of whom are fearless and ready to begin the work.
