Prelude: I hope this style of creative quasi narrative social essay (I made that term up just now, can you tell?) is well received because it’s all I can write these days. Not to hit y’all with the fanfic Author’s Note™️… but I have moved, started a new day job, began writing my debut and a slew of other things in the span of like 10 weeks so… I appreciate the grace preemptively! Honestly, I’m also still contemplating what is most appropriate to share in this forum— I have essays collecting dust that I genuinely believe push the envelope a little TOO MUCH for current conversations about sex, like my politic is expansive which leads to uncomfortable places that I am deeply afraid others won’t explore with me. 💀 Anywho… I have other pieces planned that’ll hopefully hit your inboxes soon. I really do appreciate all of the continued support and hope you stick around.
Happy Reading!
The women in my family are wary of microwaves.
When gifted with these appliances there are no grateful exclamations or excited decrees, just a short glance… looks of worry about what the new thing handed to them must mean. I thought it was generational at first, some relic from the past where women used to going about everything hard couldn’t imagine it any other way, but that just wasn’t the case. As time went on, year after year, I watched grandmothers, then mothers, then aunts, then myself make an enemy of the microwave. That opaque plate would spin with sepia tinted food in the center, snapping, cracking, stating its steamy arrival only to be pulled out with an icy core; because despite its best efforts, all those dramatic SFX produced by the waves attempting to properly heat my meal, the center remained unmoved.
I began to run a tally: microwave myths. A mental rolodex of all the times and ways I’d been let down by this machine, an object I’d been told was invented to better accommodate my needs despite showing little evidence of being able to do so. When I attempted to air these grievances to my elders, I was met with smacked teeth and rolled eyes, huffing exhalations intended to let me know how unserious my complaints were being taken. There was little sympathy to be had from women of the wood burning stove, of the hearth. The same women who questioned why I’d gifted them microwaves to begin with. Though they were short on pity, they weren’t short on wisdom, reminded me that I’d been given more than enough to cook, to heat food properly.
We spent time getting my hands reacquainted for labor, allowed my movements to revert to its native tongue. I traded button pushing for dough kneading, stand mixing for hand mixing, became fast friends with the mortar and pestle. I remembered how satisfying crafting a meal from scratch was, forgot why I wasn’t always doing this. The microwave was made obsolete not by further innovation, but rather regression. An invitation to embrace traditions I’d been primed to give up. My matriarchs knew this, prophesied this very outcome when reluctantly accepting the appliance from me. The microwave would go on to be used infrequently, for “not done yet” plate storage and tepid coffee reheats. A last resort when fleshy palms and nimble fingers grow arthritic and stiff, when fatigue sets in quicker than the biscuit dough can come together.
Great lessons happened in those kitchens. One’s unrelated to cooking entirely but just as savory and rich. Those hands, those hours spent at the hearth spoke to the work required to sustain one’s livelihood. When there are gaggles of babies and elderly parents in need of care, when the sickest child that requires tending is the one housed in your chest— one needs their hands, that invaluable resource of time to get shit done, the right way. The women in my family’s aversion to the microwave speaks to their warriors spirit. The years of rural and urban poverty survived with little more than what could fit in their palms some days. Women of old, of days where effort was the only free resource for Black folk understood what I couldn’t just yet, that constantly seeking the shortcut to a meal would only leave me with disappointment, stunned that my completed project was all but an illusion. And in the era of Big Tech™️, Big Consumerism™️, A Too Big Life™️, we’re conditioned to seek only the shortcuts everywhere, even when what we’re searching for has none.
The culture of convenience has inundated us with the belief that speed is the only measure worth tracking, that the point isn’t necessarily to do things well, but free up time for you to do what’s necessary for the Capitalist state to function adequately. Our phones and computers and televisions deliver things in seconds, Uber, DoorDash & associated services get items to us in less than an hour and all efforts to slow down have been coupled to aesthetic consumption that is still consumerist in nature. To put things plainly: microwaves (and food preparation on a macro level) are the perfect summation of all that is wrong with our current structures and methods of combatting it.
The oppressive systems running rampant are primarily successful because we think we’re cooking the same way when that’s not true. We’ve been handed the microwave for ourselves, so fatigued from the pressures of capitalism and white supremacy and all of the isms’ that we find it hard to expend the energy necessary for the wood burning stove, to curl over the hearth for hours at a time. Our foes however, have the 6 burner gas stove going full time, are frying and baking and pan searing our shit stews daily while complaining about our microwaved ends. Dozens, if not hundreds of factors go into the continued subjugation of people and one of those is time, the ability to use it to craft intricate dishes (read: plots & plans) are necessary for any liberation effort and we know that because Black women have already been doing it.
We prepare meals like we do worlds, through a systematic process where we allow ingredients to build flavor, depth, change over a controlled flame. We pull too hot cast iron skillets out the oven to serve as fresh as possible, allowing impatience to finally seep through after a long day of paced composure. The satisfaction of a job well done only reserved for something you brought to life every step of the way. The knowledge of this ask us to turn away from the microwave, to cast aside the culture intent on racing us into early graves for meals that couldn’t sustain, ones that require frequent reheating.
As Black History Month in the US comes to a close, I’ve taken a hard look at the language of revolution and liberation. Watched the names of the same 5 Black men valorized, often at the expense of Black women. Found our stories relegated to the sidelines, the corners of greyscale photos or podcast segments, a thoughtless paragraph in his biography. Was constantly reminded that under White Supremacy and cisheteropatriarchy and Capitalism, Black alone isn’t an adequate qualifier to be remembered. One must be exceptional, always, and a man, preferably. The work at the hearth doesn’t make the history books, or podcast titles or #HistoryTok videos. One has to look hard for Black womanhood, during Black History Month where it theoretically should be pretty fucking easy to find us but instead of being uplifted, warmed with our comrades in feminist or pro-Black spaces, we’re untouched with cold centers, like that dinner you just pulled from the microwave.
And despite what people may think, our way out of the shadows isn’t abandoning the hearth, but forcing people toward its warmth. Acknowledging how laborious it’s been for Black women over the decades and centuries of harvesting ingredients, kneading dough and planting seeds of the revolution. Scald fingers that refuse to disclose how many plans were made around our dinner tables, the organizing done between the passing of plates at the church fish fry. We make history by unplugging the microwave to make room for the butcher block and knife set, adopting slow preparation with longevity in mind so that we may be fulfilled, both in belly and society.
Colonialism is a project, one that will never see completion because its only intention is to cannibalize what is corporeal and available. If it were a recipe, there would be no ending instructions. And similarly, our liberation, our quest for equity must also be a project, one that requires long periods of stewing over a source of heat, letting the hard work simmer but never boil over. This is the work of the hearth, what Black women have known this whole time, why they make sure we inherit their distrust of the microwave. So that we curtail disappointment, so that we can break bread knowing all this work lead to a hot meal… cooked all the way through.
You should read more Black Woman authors & books. Here’s my suggested reading list:
Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on our Sex Obsessed Culture
Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care