Black History
The Paris Review staff is off in a tryptophan-induced haze, so we’re reposting some of our favorite Thanksgiving pieces. Enjoy your holiday!
From the cover of Disgruntled, Asali Solomon’s debut novel.
Back in the early 1980s, nono one had heard of , “a ritual for the black family” that we observed at Thanksgiving. This one I never volunteered to explain. Black families who celebrated (Kiswahili for “unity feast”)—and we were the only one I knew of—were 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 “greedy one-eyed giant” white man, and to keep the “Black Nation” energized and focused, struggling toward liberation from racism.
