A Hip Hop Track Inspired Bryant Terry To Go Vegan (Reheat)

“So often when we talk about veganism, we don't imagine Black people,” says Bryant Terry, the James Beard Award-winning cookbook author, chef, and educator. But Bryant sees veganism as deeply rooted in Black communities and traditions. And, he points out, veganism is growing faster among Black Americans than among any other group.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 1:47Dan Pashman?

  Hey everyone, it's Dan here. I have a reheat for you and it's a good one. We're going to be revisiting my conversation with Bryant Terry. He is a chef, author, artist and publisher. And one of the things Bryant's most known for is his expertise when it comes to vegan food, especially black vegan food. You know, there's this idea that like soul food is all this fried food and it's fried chicken. And the truth is that there is a long and phenomenal history, as Bryant will tell us, of black vegetarian cooking and black vegan cooking. And Bryant is able to, he makes these books that are like. Immersive. It's not just a collection of recipes. Yes, there's recipes. Yes, there's techniques, but there are stories. There is art. Some of them have playlists and music. He's just so creative. I really love his work.

• 2:32Dan Pashman?

  He's written cookbooks like Afro Vegan and Vegan Soul Kitchen. In this episode, we talk about everything from misconceptions about vegans to why he prefers collard greens over kale. And one thing to add, since this episode first aired, Bryant achieved a goal. You'll hear him mentioned in the episode. He went back to school. He recently completed his Masters of Fine Arts in Art Practice at the University of California, Berkeley. Congratulations, Bryant. Now, if there's an old episode of The Sporkful you want us to reheat, let me know. We take requests. Drop me a line at [email protected]. Thanks so much and enjoy.

• 3:05Dan Pashman?

  I saw that you did a Grub Street diet.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:07Dan Pashman?

  For the blog Grub Street. I always love you reading people's Grub Street diets.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  What'd you think about mine?

• 3:11Dan Pashman?

  The thing that I zeroed in on, I think that you and I have something similar, Bryant. You said, "I got a couple of big meals coming up, big dinners that I'm really excited for." So you're planning out days in advance what you're eating and you're, you know, like saving stomach space. You don't want to overeat at lunch when you got a special dinner. These are the things that keep me awake at night.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  It's true, and I'm fueling up throughout the day. So I'm having like, you know, smoothies and vegetable juices. So things that are nutrient dense, that are gonna make sure that, you know, I got, I can keep it moving.

• 3:40Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  But nothing that's gonna, uh...

• 3:42Dan Pashman?

  Weigh you down.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Weigh me down, exactly.

• 3:44Dan Pashman?

  It's like you're training. You're in training for a meal.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  I mean, that's a good way to look at it.

• 3:50Dan Pashman?

  Hey, respect. I respect that.

• 3:57Dan Pashman?

  This is The Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people. My guest this week is Bryant Terry. He's a James Beard Award-winning cookbook author, chef, and educator. His books focus on vegan food generally and black vegan food in particular. He's been a hugely influential voice in this space for nearly two decades. And now, he's got a new title as a publisher at one of the big publishing houses. That means he'll be finding new cookbook authors and getting their work published. So he'll have even more influence on the food world in the years to come. We'll get more into all of that later. Growing up, Bryant was never far from a vegetable garden. He was born in Memphis and often went to visit relatives who owned farms in Mississippi and Tennessee.

• 4:42Dan Pashman?

  He also spent a lot of time with his grandparents, who grew a lot of their own food in South Memphis, a neighborhood near downtown with a longstanding and vibrant working-class black community.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  My grandmother had practically a mini orchard in her backyard. Pear trees, peaches, nectarines, apples. She had a kitchen garden, and it was respectable. I mean, it was producing enough food for her to fill her larder before winter with all types of pickled pears, peaches, sauerkraut, all types of preserves. My paternal grandfather, every bit of available space in his backyard was being used to grow food. I mean, he had muscarine grapes and walnut trees, and he was raising chickens back there at some point. I remember at one point, there was a hog back there, you know, all types of dark leafy greens and corns. And so it was just an ethos that they had. It wasn't even anything special.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  They didn't talk about it like, oh, yeah, we're doing local seasonal sustainable food.

• 5:39Dan Pashman?

  Right, right, right.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  It was just, I'm hesitant to say it was the way that they survived. It was the way that they thrived. I didn't like weeding and harvesting and shelling peas and sucking corn, but I am very clear that he was aware of the benefit of me being out there with him. And my grandfather used to say this often, when you have to rely on other people to feed you, if they decide they don't want to, you'll starve. And so everything that I've been trying to impart, teach people in terms of health food and farming issues over the past two decades, these are the lessons I learned as a young person from my family.

• 6:17Dan Pashman?

  Bryant also learned a lot about food from pop culture. In high school, he got really into the socially conscious hip-hop group Boogie Down Productions. In 1990, they released an album called Edutainment, which included the song Beef. Am I right that your turn to being vegan started when you heard this song Beef?

• 6:33Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  That song, yeah, that song has a special place in my heart.

• 6:40Dan Pashman?

  Paint a picture for me, the moment that you heard that song for the first time.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  I feel like someone had given me a tape to borrow, and I was just kind of floored. I just kept listening to it over and over again.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Beef. What a relief. When will this poisonous product cease?

• 6:59Speaker 02

  This is another public service announcement. You can believe it, or you can doubt it.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Let us begin now with the cow. The way that it gets to your plate and how.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  The cow doesn't grow fast enough for man. So through his greed, he makes a faster plan.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  He has much more graphics, so I'll stop there. But, you know, hearing that, I like ran to my dad after listening to this song like 15 times. I'm like, Dad, you gotta give me this tape because I had to get the tape back to my buddy. So he agreed to get it for me if I would first read this book, The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, because I had Tiger Dad. And so, you know, I credit that song, that book, the librarian who, you know, I checked the book out from, who's a vegetarian and was like, oh, why are you interested in this book? Is it for school? And I was like, no, I want to be a vegan. I heard the song. And then she kind of like gave me other books and helped me learn more about veganism. So, yeah, like, that just really shifted

• 7:54Speaker 01

  my whole reality and changed my habits, my attitudes and my politics. When I was on that journey, and especially when I was, saw myself as like, I'm a vegan now. Whatever stereotypes you have about the most dogmatic, judgmental, self-righteous, finger-wagging, on a soapbox, just haranguing people, jerk of a vegan, that's who I was. And I asked my parents for forgiveness, almost weekly, because I just was such a terror.

• 8:24Dan Pashman?

  So, so early on, it was more about the ethics of animals, the ethics of factory farming. And like, when did it start to also become about health?

• 8:34Speaker 01

  I mean, that was part of it, too. Because growing up, my diet was very helpful because we literally would harvest food right before we ate. And, and not that we never went out to like Pizza Hut. Yeah, we used to have Pizza Hut Fridays at our home sometimes. And those type of, you know, consuming industrial foods were a special treat. It was few and far between.

• 8:55Dan Pashman?

  So often, what we hear about southern food and soul food is this food is unhealthy.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  It's racist.

• 9:03Dan Pashman?

  I want to get to that, but like, I'm curious from your personal perspective, like, we don't hear as much about how vegetable centric so much of that food is.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:12Dan Pashman?

  And we certainly don't hear as much about the longstanding focus on vegetarianism and healthy eating in a lot of the black community, going back decades, let alone the connection to vegetables and living off the land that traces back to Africa.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 9:26Dan Pashman?

  How aware were you of all that as a young man first starting down that path?

• 9:32Speaker 01

  I was very aware of it because I had access to resources that helped me understand those histories and those practices. I think a lot of people have traditionally kind of seen that as like these practices of upper middle class, white suburbanites, and more recently, more like, you know, urban, white, young folks gentrifying urban centers like Williamsburg, where I'm staying now, because I love that neighborhood.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  But, you know, my first contact with veganism, I mean, it was Black Seven Dead Venice in our community who told me about it. And, you know, obviously it was more theologically driven, but this idea that you don't have to eat animal products and it can have these benefits, I learned from them. And then, after I had the obligatory, you know, kind of being fascinated with the Nation of Islam, because I read the autobiography of Malcolm X and just being like, what is this thing? And learning about their health ministry.

• 10:23Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, even like Dick Gregory, the great sort of comedian and social commentator, he wrote a whole, a whole healthy eating cookbook.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  Cooking with Mother Nature, you know, that was an early book that mentors gave me. And just even talking to older, you know, there was a health food store in Memphis that I would often go to to get my new staples that I needed for my vegan diet. And I would meet Rastafarians and elderly black folks who just were, you know, eating more healthily. So I had to, like, I was in community with a lot of black people who... Were values aligned. And so I feel like it's important for me to uplift those legacies, as you said, because so often, when we talk about veganism, we don't imagine like black people. And you know, the interesting thing, I don't know if you know this, but in terms

• 11:11Speaker 01

  of like, the fastest growing population of vegans in the United States, it's black people. As much as people like to vilify African American diets and, and talk about how artery clogging and unhealthy it is, those are reductive ways of thinking about a large, diverse and complex culinary traditions. And that's just one subset of it. But the foundations, the core of a lot of, you know, traditional black diets are largely vegetable centric.

• 11:38Dan Pashman?

  Just to back up what Bryant's saying, according to a Pew study, 8% of black Americans are vegan or vegetarian, compared to only 3% of the general US population. After high school, Bryant went to college at Xavier University in Louisiana, then got a master's in history at NYU.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  I learned how to write a lot better. I learned how to think a lot more critically. And much of the work that I was doing as a grad student, the research that I was doing, led me into this food work that I've done.

• 12:05Dan Pashman?

  Sometimes he thinks about going back to get a PhD.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  I do think that, you know, being a university professor would be a great, kind of like, I don't know, third, fourth act for me, however you want to.

• 12:15Dan Pashman?

  Doesn't publishing five cookbooks, can you like swap that in instead of the PhD? I think I'm, I'm giving you a PhD, Bryant.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  Okay, honorary PhD.

• 12:23Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, honorary PhD.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  I'll take that.

• 12:26Dan Pashman?

  I'll write it up. I'll, I'll give you a certificate before you leave.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  Appreciate that. Squorkful you.

• 12:30Dan Pashman?

  That's right.

• 12:34Dan Pashman?

  During his time in New York, Bryant also started thinking more about what many kids in the city eat, and the effect that has in their development.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  I probably saw young people on the subway, you know, in the morning, eating candy bars and red hot Cheetos and drinking sodas and energy drinks, but.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  In the midst of doing that research, I looked at it and I was like, oh, this is a problem. Now I describe it as what my friend and mentor, Raj Patel, talks about, you know, stuffed and starved. I was like, oh, these young people, they're eating a lot of food, but these are empty calories. I'm like, this is breakfast. You shouldn't be eating that for breakfast. But just in general, the kind of nutrient-rich foods that we all need, but especially young, developing bodies and minds, like, there has to be some intervention.

• 13:20Dan Pashman?

  As part of his graduate work, Bryant had done research on the Black Panthers. In the 60s, they created a free breakfast program for kids in low-income neighborhoods. It started in Oakland and spread to over 45 chapters across the country.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  And so I was really inspired by that work of the Black Panthers and decided to found this organization, Be Healthy, in response, partially to noticing things like that and just feeling like we had gone off the rails and we really needed to figure out a way to take care of our young people.

• 13:48Dan Pashman?

  Bryant's nonprofit, Be Healthy, used cooking as a way to engage and inform young people, from marginalized groups. He wanted to train them to be food justice activists in their communities. Bryant also enrolled in culinary school to get the skills and a degree that would help him run his nonprofit. But as he worked to educate younger Black people about veganism and healthier eating, he kept bumping up against a lot of the same misconceptions and stereotypes, even among the people he was trying to reach.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  A lot of Black folks have these very negative stereotypes about our own cuisine, these reductive ways of thinking about it. Oh, I'm not gonna eat that soul food. That's so unhealthy, you know? That's why Black people are so sick, without looking at the multiple factors that might contribute to public health crises in the Black community, from medical apartheid to, you know, environmental racism in many low-income Black communities, where literally the air and the soil and the water is being poisoned, or, you know, just the lack of access to healthy, fresh, affordable food in communities so that people can actually consume the things that are life-giving. So to pin it on our cultural foods, is this BS?

• 14:59Speaker 01

  I'm not denying, yeah, pigs' feet and chitterlings or chitlins, however you want to say it. And, you know, all these kind of like stereotypes of just like what people see is like the remnants of the institution of slavery, you know? Like, those are the worst parts of the animals that black people were just forced to eat. It's painting the institution in a monolith, you know? It looked different in the coastal Carolinas than in Louisiana, than in the Caribbean. You know, my thing is, we can hold it all. We can hold that, you know, the remnants of the institution of slavery. We can hold the other way that I think people kind of imagine black food, which are the big flavored meats and the overcooked vegetables

• 15:42Speaker 01

  and the sugary desserts that you might find at a soul food restaurant. Yeah, that's a part of it, too. But what about the food that my granddad was eating and cooking? You know, I hate that so often we like to fetishize these, you know, different nutrient-rich foods from other places. Goji berries and quinoa.

• 16:00Dan Pashman?

  Acai.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  Acai from Brazil. I'm like, what about the dark, you know, leafy greens like collards, mustards, turnips, kale, dandelions, sugar snap peas, pole beans, butter beans, black eye peas? Like, these are the foundations of any helpful diet. I think any dietitian, nutritionist, physician would say, we all should be eating a diverse diet with these type of foods. These are our cultural foods. These are our superfoods.

• 16:34Dan Pashman?

  When we come back, Bryant publishes his first cookbook about black vegan food and runs into obstacles. Plus, he tells me how he really feels about kale. Stick around.

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• 20:05Dan Pashman?

  Welcome back to another Sporkful Reheat. I'm Dan Pashman. Hey, check out my Instagram when you get a chance. I share what I'm up to, what I'm eating, all of my hot takes that don't always make the cut here on the Sporkful, although I don't know why anybody would want to cut out my rants about the best way to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. But the point is that that stuff is on my Instagram and we have a lot of fun there. Also, sometimes I'm like debating, what should we do for this episode? And I'll put up a poll. It gives you a chance to actually have input into the show. So you can do it right now while you're listening. Follow me on Instagram, at the Sporkful. Again, that's at the Sporkful. Thanks.

• 20:43Dan Pashman?

  Okay, let's get back to Bryant Terry. In 2006, after four years running his New York nonprofit, Be Healthy, Bryant decided to shutter the organization and move his cooking and activism in a new direction. He moved to Oakland and co-wrote a cookbook with Anna Lepay called Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen. Off the success of that book, he decided to pitch his first solo cookbook, Vegan Soul Kitchen.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  We shopped it to about 12 publishers and 10 of them flat out said no.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  And what we heard was, well, it's just you're cutting the pie too thinly. I literally had one of these editors be like, well, it's kind of oxymoronic. Black people and vegan, you know, like people just thought that some of these people thought it was absurd. And I recognize that there were some editors who were very enthusiastic about the idea. But when the number crunchers came in and then they were looking at the potential of it making money, they just didn't feel like there was a big enough audience for it.

• 21:42Dan Pashman?

  Eventually Bryant did find a publisher for Vegan Soul Kitchen. The book came out in 2009. Over the next several years, he wrote two more cookbooks. One of them, Afro Vegan, was named by Bon Appetit as one of the best vegetarian cookbooks of all time. In 2015, he became the chef in residence at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, where he creates public programming that relates to a lot of the issues he's been working on for so many years. Then last year, right at the start of the pandemic, he released the cookbook Vegetable Kingdom, got a ton of great attention, sold well, and won an NAACP Image Award. Bryant's work has put him right at the intersection of a bunch of hot button issues in food. So I knew what I had to do. All right, Brian, I got a lightning round coming your way.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Let's go.

• 22:24Dan Pashman?

  I'm gonna, I'm gonna.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  I love lightning rounds.

• 22:25Dan Pashman?

  All right, all right. Here comes a lightning round, Brian, you ready? We'll add in a sound effect later.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  Do, do, do, do, do.

• 22:31Dan Pashman?

  Dun, dun, dun, dun.

• 22:35Dan Pashman?

  Sure, it would be great if everyone ate vegan and vegetarian, but that food is too expensive.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  Let me just say this, that argument always, the, the main thing about that argument that bothers me is because it is really relying on this individualistic approach to eating well. And I think that's the biggest problem. We need to think about ways in which we can be in community, eating better together, right? I don't know if this is lightning, I feel like this is like a thunderstorm.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  I could stop.

• 23:04Dan Pashman?

  No, no, but that, but I, I understand what you're saying.

• 23:07Speaker 01

  I mean, I get it, like, a lot of people are working a lot. They're working one or two, two, maybe three jobs because they can't find a job that pays a living wage that would allow them to just work one thing and be able to have more time with their family.

• 23:19Dan Pashman?

  Right, so that you have these larger economic factors that put people in a position where they have no choice but to go pick up McDonald's on the way home from their second job.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  If we were to ensure that people got like a living wage, then that would address a number of these issues. There are a lot of structural barriers that I think could be addressed through public policy that we need to be paying attention to.

• 23:40Dan Pashman?

  Next item. Often, when a, an area does get an increase in access to a broader range of healthier food options, it comes with gentrification. When you see that happening in an area, that feels like a difficult tension. How do you, how do you process that?

• 24:02Speaker 01

  Can I curse on here?

• 24:03Dan Pashman?

  Sure.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  It's bullshit. I mean, look, gentrification is not just about like, white people who, two decades ago, wouldn't have considered moving in Brooklyn. And now people are like, "Oh, I'm living in Brooklyn." That's not what it's about. It's about corporations, you know, buying up blocks, buying up neighborhoods, building, you know, expensive buildings that raise the rent and push out long-term residents. So, I, I know people say that, you know, like, "Well, yeah, there are some benefits to gentrification." Look, I can talk about the, the changes that I saw in, in my neighborhood. I saw the supermarket across the street. I, I was like, "Oh, now I'm seeing kombucha. Now I'm seeing like, you know, kimchi. Now I'm seeing all these things." And I was happy about that.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  But I think this idea that like, "Well, gentrification can be good because it brings in like, more options," that's a very simplistic way of looking at gentrification. So, gentrification is economic violence, period.

• 24:57Dan Pashman?

  Kale versus collard greens.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  Damn, collards.

• 25:02Dan Pashman?

  I mean, like, if you want to boil down so much of what we're talking about, though, to something that you can like, hold in your hands, this to me is such a, it crystallizes so many of these issues of perception of different people's foods. I mean, they're in the same family of cabbage. And yet, the perception, and where you will find them, sold and served, and what they are, and what they cost, and how they are discussed, is radically different.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'll say this, collards for eating, kale for smoothies.

• 25:34Dan Pashman?

  Okay.

• 25:35Speaker 01

  So, I'll leave it at that.

• 25:38Dan Pashman?

  What's your take on the new meat substitutes, like Impossible Meat, Beyond Meat?

• 25:43Speaker 01

  I mean, look, I just had an Impossible burger for the first time, like, two weeks ago. I had it, and it was fine. I'm like, "Yeah, if I'm out drinking, and there were some Impossible burgers on the menu, I might get one." But, let me tell you the thing that really irks me about the ascendance of a lot of these fake meat burgers. Many of the places that I would go to restaurants...

• 26:10Speaker 01

  That used to have these super inventive and interesting like house made, plant-based burgers with like whole grains and legumes and vegetables. And they were just killing it. I go back to these places now and they're like, well, we have Impossible Burger or Beyond Burger. And that's what irks me, you know? It's it's taking away from the creativity of chefs who could really bring their technical skill and know how to introduce people to more options.

• 26:41Dan Pashman?

  That's the end of the lightning round, Brian. You survived the lightning round. All right.

• 26:47Dan Pashman?

  I think you see why Bryant is a leading voice in his field. And now his platform is bigger than ever. Back in May, he announced that he was starting his own publishing imprint, Four Color Books, which would be part of Penguin Random House. Four Color is a reference to the printing process that prints books in full color, and also a nod to the idea of including more people of color in publishing, both as authors and target audience. As publisher at Four Color, Bryant now has the power to decide what kinds of authors and cookbooks get published. Last month, he released the first book under his imprint, one he edited himself, called Black Food. Over 100 people contributed recipes, blending styles and influences from across the African diaspora and beyond. But that's not it. There are essays by folks like Michael Twitty,

• 27:31Dan Pashman?

  Osaii Endalyn, and Dr. Jessica B. Harris, plus art, poetry, and music playlists. Ywande Komalafa contributed a recipe of crispy cassava skillet cakes from West Africa. The pastry chef Paula Velez has a recipe for flan de arroz con dulce, a hybrid dish inspired by her Afro Dominican roots. Karina Rivera, a chef from Mexico City, has a recipe for charred okra tamales. As I told Bryant, reading this book feels like joining an ongoing conversation about the many facets of black food. It felt to me like it's not just a cookbook or a collection of essays or art. It's an immersive experience.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  First of all, I might have to bite that term because thus far, people have talked about it being a tome and a compendium, but for now, I'm gonna be like, it's an immersive experience.

• 28:20Dan Pashman?

  Take it, it's yours. Yeah, go for it.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  What I'm doing in this book, I've done this all along. Like, if you look at my body of work, I've always had some type of like inclusion of art. I've had the suggested soundtracks. I, you know, offer ideas about books and films to help build it out. This is just the first time I've gotten like a lot of money to do it so well and beautifully.

• 28:41Dan Pashman?

  But that's how you were able to do it so well, is that you had been preparing and doing it in other venues for a long time.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  Yes. I'm clear. I always say that my, every other project I did, prepared me to write this. And so, I used to be embarrassed about like, whenever I do a new book, I'd be like, oh, I hate that other project. Like, the prior book, oh, that book sucked. I could have did this. I could have done that. And I reframed it now as, you know what? I was practicing in public.

• 29:06Dan Pashman?

  So as we said, this book includes playlists. A lot of people listen to music when they cook. But I, I think that, that for you and your work, that connection between food and cooking and music is especially powerful. It has a deeper significance.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  Coming from a musical family, like when we had gatherings, there was food, there was music, because my family, I come from a family of musicians, so people are always singing, playing the piano. There was community building. There was bringing in folks from not just our family, but from the neighborhood. And there, my family's faith institutions. And then we would be sharing bags of the surplus from their orchards and gardens.

• 29:46Dan Pashman?

  Like, that's what reading this book felt like to me. It felt like being at a, at a family picnic or at a party. And like, there's great music on, and there's folks in the kitchen who are cranking out different dishes. And you walk through the kitchen and grab something off a plate. And there's some other folks in the corner over there who are mixing drinks and passing out the drinks. And there's some folks over here who are laughing. And then there's some folks over here that are like having a deep, intense, philosophical conversation. Like, that's, that's the perfect party. You know, and that's what this book felt like.

• 30:12Speaker 01

  You give me all types of amazing talking.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  This book is a party.

• 30:17Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  That's how I want you to understand.

• 30:18Dan Pashman?

  It's an immersive party experience.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  Well, I'm done writing books. I don't know if you know that this is my last book.

• 30:25Dan Pashman?

  Really? No, I was not aware of that.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, Black Food is my last book. And, you know, I didn't write it. I compiled it. But yeah, I'm done after this. But also, now that I'm a publisher, I need to clear my plate so that I can focus on learning how to be a good publisher.

• 30:46Dan Pashman?

  If we take a step back, there has been this increasing effort in the last, especially the last year, but the last few years, to shine more of a light on the diversity of black food and black Americans' contributions to American food. From my perspective, as a white person from a mostly white suburb, a lot of this was new to me, to be honest. It feels to me like there's some progress, certainly more to be done. But like, I'm curious from your perspective, like, does it feel like things are changing?

• 31:20Speaker 01

  I'll tell you what. I was very clear we would see post the uprisings and the embarrassment of a lot of these big companies because of their unsavory practices. Why am I saying unsavory? Because they're racist practices. Stop trying to be all like diplomatic.

• 31:43Speaker 01

  You know, people are trying to repair reputational harm. People are embarrassed. And not that the institutions don't have good people in them who understand the need to bring more diverse voices into food media. I get that. But it's also about like, yeah, like, we look bad now. We gotta fix this really quickly. And so what we'll see over the next couple of years are a lot of books and TV shows and, you know, all types of projects that are coming from black slash BIPOC folks around food. And, you know, I'm afraid, and many people are arguing that that door is starting to close already. You know, I'm like, yeah, the door is going to be open. And then we need to be very like conscious about when it's starting to close.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  And like I said, some people are like, yeah, it's kind of starting to close. People are getting comfortable again. And so my thing is, it's one thing to... Reward quote unquote talent, you know, giving out book deals, giving out shows. But what about ensuring that the people who are in decision making power? We need to make sure that those spaces are diversified. We need to make sure that you're seeing more black and brown faces who connect with the culture, who have a real investment in ensuring that, you know, we hear multiple voices. And that's why it was important for me, for my agent and me to pitch this imprint and

• 33:05Speaker 01

  actually have the opportunity to, you know, not just mentor and kind of guide different food creators, but actually help them take their career to the next level with book deals.

• 33:19Dan Pashman?

  And for folks who haven't published a book, which is most of our listeners, and who don't understand the inner workings of publishing, you get an advance. I wrote a book a few years back and I, I did, I thought the advance, I thought that meant like, oh, you get paid that in advance.

• 33:42Dan Pashman?

  No, that's not what the word advance means in this context. It is an advance against royalties. And it is paid out in increments over a couple of years. And if your book sells beyond where your royalties would have gotten to that point, then you may make more, but most books don't.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot of people aren't earning those advances out.

• 33:59Dan Pashman?

  Right, right. Obviously, it's nice to get paid more for your work. What are some of the other ways in which a larger advance impacts the process?

• 34:09Speaker 01

  I mean, look, I think what people need to understand is that a lot of people who are getting book deals, they're paltry. If you don't have like a huge platform, you're not necessarily getting a big advance unless you're just like, you know, hot at the moment. Even people who are lucky enough to get like, let's say a six figure advance, right? That sounds like a lot, but when you think about how a typical book deal is structured, so you might get like, A little bit of that when you first sign. Maybe it's a third, maybe it's a fourth. And then when you turn your book in, you'll get another little chunk of it. And then when you-

• 34:44Dan Pashman?

  When it publishes.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, when it publishes, you get a little chunk. And then six months later, or a year later, you get a chunk. I don't want to discourage anyone from writing books or becoming an author. Because if you're passionate about it, do it. You know, you gotta like, whatever, push through it. Everything's hard, you know, like, life is hard. And so I encourage you to put the work in. But just be clear going into it, this is not IG. This is real life.

• 35:10Dan Pashman?

  So as for your publishing imprint, Four Color Books, where do you hope to see it in 10 years?

• 35:16Speaker 01

  You know, with all the authors that I'm working with, I really want them to be able to grow their, excuse the colonialist language, their empire. You know, like Rohana Bizet Martinez, the now 17-year-old Oakland-based chef, which was the first acquisition that Four Color made. She's a runner-up on Top Chef Junior. When she was 13, she starred at Chez Panis and E. Coy in London and cooked at the Jane's Beard House. I mean, this young woman is genius. And she's telegenic. She's smart. She needs her own TV show. I don't want her just to write books. I want her to like, grow her reach in whatever way she wants to.

• 36:00Speaker 01

  I mean, I imagine she wants to show, but if she wants to, I want to be like, use my, my social capital, my platform, to help her get that. And I feel like that way with many of the authors that I work with. And, and I see Four Color helping to just kind of support that.

• 36:14Dan Pashman?

  Bryant tells me about another chef who he thought could write a great cookbook, but the chef didn't have publishing experience, didn't know how to shape a book proposal. So Bryant and his team worked directly with the chef, which is very unusual in the industry. More often, an agent would work with a chef to shape a proposal, then take it to publishers. Bryant took a more active role in mentoring an author who he thought had potential.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  I think one of the most powerful things that I imagine Four Color will do as an imprint is modeling. Modeling how things could be done differently in the publishing industry. Modeling the way that, you know, when you bring more diversity into publishing, everybody wins. I do- Imagine that Four Color will be doing things so differently that people are gonna take notice, so that, you know, people will be inspired to consider ways that they can do it differently as well.

• 37:13Dan Pashman?

  That's Brian Terry, publisher of Four Color Books, and editor of the new book, Black Food: Stories, Art, and Recipes from Across the African Diaspora. I really love this book. It's an immersive party experience. What more do you need to know? Okay, get it now wherever books are sold. This show is produced by me along with senior producer- Emma Morgenstern- and producer- Andres O'Hara. Our editor is- Tracy Samuelson. The show is mixed by- Jared O'Connell. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher. Our executive producers are Peter Clowney and Daisy Rosario. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

• 37:46Speaker 07

  And I'm Sam Rahim in Ypsilanti, Michigan, reminding you to eat more, eat better, eat more better.

• 38:05Dan Pashman?

  This reheat was produced by- Gianna Palmer. The team that produces The Sporkful today includes me along with managing producer- Emma Morgenstern- and senior producer- Andres O'Hara. Our engineer is- Jared O'Connell. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of SiriusXM Podcasts. Our executive producer is Camille Stanley. And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app? Yes, the SiriusXM app, it has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage. Does your podcasting app have that? And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one. And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three months free of the SiriusXM app by going to siriusxm.com/sporkful. Until next time, I'm Dan Pashman.

• 38:58Speaker 05

  Hey Richmond, Mark Smith, Midas Richmond. 2026, we have been doing what we do for 29 years. Total car care, total community care. In 2026, we are donating $365,000. A thousand dollars a day to the nonprofits we've historically supported. Gutchen Cares, Shalom Farms, St. Joseph's Villa, Ask, the Colonial Heights Food Pantry, everybody we've helped over the years. These are important things making a big impact in our society right now. Total car care, total community care, that is Midas of Richmond.

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