A photo posted by Big Switch Farm (@bigswitchfarm) on

　　LORA: Traditional Appalachia cooking was crafted from a confluence of Native American, African-American and European influences. The one thing I always try to stress to visitors is that the region is not monolithic. Even the quickest study of our food reveals that. And our foodways continue to evolve as new populations and immigrant communities make a home in the mountains. I think about that every time I survey my local grocery store's intimidatingly large wall of lard RCA audio video cable and see it accented with buckets labeled "manteca." A few shelves over, bags of masa sit side-by-side with cornmeal. TUNDE: The dinner held together more than a dozen denizens of coal country. All greeted me with grace, filling me generously with many different whiskeys and potent ideas on a wide range of subjects, from the flexibility of hemp as a cash crop to the complexities of coal markets. LORA: That night, our farmhouse table included banjo and fiddle players, straight and LGBTQ folks, college professors, restless children, farmers, illustrators, policy experts, poets, film archivists and mine-safety advocates. It was a mix of people whose families have been in the mountains for generations and those that have come on their own to find a life and home in Eastern Kentucky. TUNDE: We sang and danced to the banjo and fiddle, and of course, went four-wheeling drowned with warming spirits. I left the next day, content with my experience of Appalachia. I know I saw but a tiny sliver of a sliver — most of Appalachia is not Big Switch.
I know who I am, and where I stand. I am an undocumented, black African. I am a target in Trump's America, but I found new friends in so-called Trump country. LORA: When Tunde departed, he left tubs of spices from a small Louisville African grocery we'd stopped at on our way out of the city. They've found their way into our daily home cooking, our kitchen filling with the aroma of ground hot chili peppers and sprinkled dried crawfish flakes, these tastes no longer strangers at our table. This essay was crafted in response to a summit on racism and difference in food, staged at by and .