[00:00:07] Speaker A: Assalamu alaikum. I'm Latasha Russo, executive director of Sappalo Square, and welcome to on the Square, a special podcast brought to you by Sappalo Square in collaboration with the Maidan, where every month Sappalo squad get on the square and in to some real talk about race and islam in the Americas.
Family we all have one good, bad or indifferent. But have you ever wondered where ingrained family behaviors, traditions and healthy or unhealthy relationships originated in your family? Have you wanted to know or discover the secrets and accomplishments that lie within your family histories? Like why Uncle June Bug and Uncle Tony always get into an argument after a game of spades at the cookout? Why you only see Aunt Mary at the family reunions and she makes it a point to give your grandmother the side eye whenever she can? Or how about learning that back in the day, your great great great grandfather was the only black business owner in the town where he grew up? Well, today I'm speaking with Tiffany Green Abdullah, author of the Bean Pie A remembering of our family's faith, fortitude and forgiveness.
[00:01:22] Speaker B: And she did just that.
[00:01:24] Speaker A: Tiffany Green Abdullah is a visionary leader and speaker in learning innovations, community development and life coaching. Hailing from Chicago, she was a first generation college student and has obtained multiple degrees, including a bachelor's in economics and a master's of education in education and technology, both from Vanderbilt University. Compelled to write this book to better understand her family's history and share her own story, Tiffany hopes the bean pie will create a legacy of storytelling in her family and yours and regain their legacy related to the bean pie, which she bakes and sells alongside her book. When she isn't writing, Tiffany is the chief executive officer at her consulting firm, Tiffany Green Consultants, as well as giving back to the community through committee and board involvement, she lives in Atlanta with her son. Tiffany dreams of turning her writings into movies and television shows. So welcome, Tiffany. I am a big fan of your book, so I really appreciate you being here today.
[00:02:32] Speaker C: Thank you for having me. I'm really honored to be know I got the book.
[00:02:36] Speaker A: I bought the book sometime last year and it took me a while to read it, but when I did read it, I read it and then I came back to you and I was like, are you saying that your aunt Daisy is the one who created the original bean pie? And you were like, yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. So in the book you relate that your aunt Daisy is the one who created the recipe, the original recipe for the bean pie, and that this was passed down through oral family history. Now in the book, it's in more detail. But if you would just tell us a little bit about what that family history entails.
[00:03:15] Speaker C: My great great aunt Daisy, she's from Alabama, Opalika, Alabama. So she moved to Detroit in her early 20s. By the time she finally got out there, and she was already cooking. So we know cooking was a big part of her lineage, of her upbringing through the family.
[00:03:38] Speaker B: And she was introduced to the Nation.
[00:03:41] Speaker C: Of Islam very shortly after she got to Detroit. So I know there was an interaction between her and the Nation of Islam. Because it was in that use of the navy beans that she was already familiar with.
[00:03:55] Speaker B: But it was that requirement from the.
[00:03:57] Speaker C: Nation to sort of change how she was cooking that I know led her to the bean pie and to crafting the bean pie and using the sort of construct of the sweet potato pie, which a lot of people say is similar to. So taking that and then transitioning that.
[00:04:14] Speaker B: Into the bean pie through oral tradition.
[00:04:17] Speaker C: I understood that she was always part of the inner circle of the Nation of Islam. Due to her moving from Detroit to Chicago. At the same time Elijah Muhammad moved his entire family to Chicago.
[00:04:30] Speaker B: She was part of know next migration.
[00:04:33] Speaker C: I guess, from Detroit to Chicago with the nation. Because people always think the nation started in Chicago and not really understanding that it started in Detroit.
And then my mom comes in in terms of transitioning that recipe from sort of an inner circle family thing. Because my mom says she remembers eating a bean pie as a little girl. So she was born in 1953.
And that the bean pie was something that was sort of served at dinner parties. It was something that Aunt Daisy would always bring with her when she would.
[00:05:07] Speaker B: Eat, when she would go out to.
[00:05:09] Speaker C: Dinner or when she would make dinners. Because she would do, like, iftars for the nation. And when she would attend dinners at Elijah Muhammad's house, she would always bring bean pies. And then when my mom started working.
[00:05:23] Speaker B: For Shabazz restaurant, was know she was.
[00:05:27] Speaker C: Asked to ask on Daisy for the recipe. And she gave that recipe. My mother gave that recipe to the manager at Shabazz restaurant. And from that point on, we sort of see within a few years, the commercialization of the bean pie coming out of Shabazz restaurant.
[00:05:46] Speaker B: And I did our research on following.
[00:05:48] Speaker C: The newspapers, like, when was the first ad place and all of that stuff.
[00:05:52] Speaker A: The bean pie is actually only a short part of the book. So let's kind of get into the overarching theme of the book, which is the women.
The women in the book include your aunt Daisy, Daisy Kennan, your grandmother, Big Shirley, Shirley Green Boyd, your mother, little Shirley Shirley Green Wallace, and yourself.
Was that your original intention, or did it just start developing as you began.
[00:06:20] Speaker B: To look back at your history?
[00:06:22] Speaker C: Yeah, it really developed sort of organically. The original intent was to just write about the bean pie. So as I began to have conversations with my mother, the sort of point of the book and the scope of the book sort of increased through those conversations with my mom. And mind you, this is really like, February, March of 2020. So this is when the pandemic is kicking off. So it was just a lot of emotions, right as we started seeing what was happening out of that and people passing away.
So the book became very emotional, very palpable for me to really create a family story and just beyond Daisy, but really getting into my grandmother, my mother, due to things my mother was revealing.
[00:07:13] Speaker B: About her relationship with her mother, I.
[00:07:16] Speaker C: Didn'T really understand initially. I mean, I did once I got.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: To the end that this was really.
[00:07:23] Speaker C: A developing relationship with my mother in the writing of the book and something.
[00:07:28] Speaker B: That would really come into play later.
[00:07:32] Speaker C: By the time I published a book, knowing just how important it was to have these conversations with my mother, I.
[00:07:37] Speaker B: Didn'T know that at the beginning.
[00:07:39] Speaker C: But being able to tell her story and tell my grandmother's story wind up.
[00:07:44] Speaker B: Being very cathartic and healing for my mother.
[00:07:47] Speaker A: So as you're writing this and as you're reading over things and just going through all of the process that it takes to gather information, what is a quality or characteristic from each woman that you feel you have that you love about yourself?
And did you know that before going on this journey.
[00:08:13] Speaker B: There were things that I think I thought about my grandmother. There was things that I think I.
[00:08:21] Speaker C: Thought about my mother that really changed.
[00:08:25] Speaker B: During the book and during the things that happened, like the lifeing, as I.
[00:08:31] Speaker C: Was writing the book, in the context of a pandemic, in the context of my mother becoming ill and having to.
[00:08:39] Speaker B: Really become sort of a caregiver and.
[00:08:42] Speaker C: Spend time, spending more time with her during that process. And I learned a lot of things about my mother in terms of her.
[00:08:49] Speaker B: Career and really being an innovator.
[00:08:52] Speaker C: I didn't really know that. I just thought my mom was just like a lady who used a typewriter as she was coming up in her field, but she was really like a word processor. We look at that now as, like, computers. We all have laptops and things, but that was her actual job title, was a word processor. And so as she sort of detailed out her career. I was like, wow, she was really a trailblazer in terms of a woman.
[00:09:20] Speaker B: Working in a corporate environment using technology.
[00:09:26] Speaker C: She was really a trailblazer, innovative.
[00:09:29] Speaker B: So I think I have that in.
[00:09:30] Speaker C: Common with her that I learned through.
[00:09:32] Speaker B: Writing my grandmother, I hadn't really thought.
[00:09:35] Speaker C: About her deeply in a long time, so I started writing this book, and sometimes it was like, what's it called? Like, astral projection. I had to really meditate and put.
[00:09:47] Speaker B: Myself in her shoes, thinking about her as a teenage girl, thinking about her having grown up in the situation she.
[00:09:58] Speaker C: Grew up in, losing her mother at a young age to really understand who was the woman that I remember as a child who helped to raise me. She was always really funny when she.
[00:10:10] Speaker B: Was in a good mood. And so I think I have that.
[00:10:15] Speaker C: In common with her, just being kind of, like, kind of comedic in a.
[00:10:18] Speaker B: Sense, and wanting to always keep the situation light. But when she wasn't in a good.
[00:10:23] Speaker C: Mood, she wasn't in a good mood.
I don't want to give away the book, but you'll learn some of the issues if the audience reads the book.
[00:10:34] Speaker B: But then on Daisy, she was a trailblazer.
[00:10:38] Speaker C: She was a person who lived life by her own accord, by her own record. She was very observant, and she would use those observations to really benefit herself in terms of her business. And so I think some ways I.
[00:10:53] Speaker B: Have that I'm similar in that way, that I'm quiet, but trust me, I'm.
[00:10:59] Speaker C: Paying attention to everything, and I'm absorbing it and trying to figure out how that's going to play, how it's going to benefit me in terms of what I'm doing and who I'm around and.
[00:11:09] Speaker B: All of those types of things.
[00:11:10] Speaker A: Something else that stood out for me was from the beginning, during Aunt Daisy's upbringing, I noticed a lot of do for self mentality or self reliance within the family when they were in Alabama. So Aunt Daisy was able to learn how to grow and cook her own food, preserve it, sell it. I also remember she learned how to sew, and she probably had other skills that weren't mentioned. But when she left Alabama, she moved to Detroit. She opened up a restaurant, made clothes. So she was using those skills that she had learned in Alabama. She eventually opened some properties.
So what I noticed is that those skills that she learned in Alabama didn't seem to get passed on to the next generation. So towards the end of the book, you mentioned that you had bought your own home, and at that time, you were the only one who owned property.
So my question is, we spend a lot of time, whether that's in closed circles or in the public, talking about knowing our history as african american people in the United States. But how important is it for us to know our own family history so that type of knowledge and those skills don't get lost or die? And really, how did you feel about that? Was that something that you thought about. Or you picked up on. While you were writing the book or reading it afterwards?
[00:12:53] Speaker B: In terms of knowing my own history.
[00:12:58] Speaker C: Was something that I always wanted.
[00:13:00] Speaker B: Always felt like I didn't know enough of my history. And so part of this was just.
[00:13:07] Speaker C: A search for, like, who am I? Who's my great grandmother?
[00:13:12] Speaker B: My great great grandmother.
[00:13:15] Speaker C: A lot of these names, like Carrie, I didn't know her. I wasn't told about her. And it wasn't someone that even my mother knew. It was a lot of things that were forgotten as we went forward in history. And like you even said, the skills. The skills didn't.
We're not passed down. That's those skills of sewing, those skills of growing our own food. And I would attribute that to moving from a sort of rural lifestyle. To an urban lifestyle. Where you didn't really have a lot of land to grow food. And a lot of those things and the conveniences of modern life sort of took over.
But those are things that I'm very interested in. In terms of growing food. And having more properties and real estate.
[00:14:09] Speaker B: And things like that.
[00:14:10] Speaker C: But learning my family history. Is definitely something I'm very much fascinated with. Fascinated with the individual stories that exist within the family.
And wanting to know more. Because there was things that I discovered.
[00:14:25] Speaker B: As I was sort of at the.
[00:14:27] Speaker C: Point of almost publishing a book. Going back even further in my family's history. And really wanting to look at exploring those stories. Going even further in the past. With, say, grandma Carrie as a central. You know, there's no lost journal or something that I can start with. So that would probably be more fiction than nonfiction.
[00:14:50] Speaker B: But I still think we need to.
[00:14:53] Speaker C: Tell those stories as best we can. Because her story may be kind of interesting. If I can verify some of the things that I did find. In terms of further going backwards and genealogical research. Of her upbringing and a family that she's from. And that she herself might be biracial.
[00:15:13] Speaker A: One of the things. Well, it's a lot of things I like about the book. But another thing that I like is that you touch on a lot of topics within the book itself. And as the story progressed from one generation to the next. You made sure you let the reader know certain things. You may have explained specific terms or just let the reader know what was going on during those time frames, what was happening in society.
As you continue to read, you would begin to see patterns developing within each woman and how societal issues that were going on with whatever period that they were in, how those issues affected the community and also changed and affected family dynamics. So, for example, you acknowledged family members from one generation began to use drugs, and then in the next generation, they were not only using drugs, but they were selling drugs. And then later, you may see the effects of incarceration related to both of those things.
I don't know if many people would think about that as they're writing. So what I want to know, why was it important for you to include.
[00:16:34] Speaker B: That type of context within the book?
[00:16:39] Speaker C: I think it was really just to create a holistic look at each person, their makeup, their challenges, their successes, and just really trying to lay out the whole person, right.
[00:16:52] Speaker B: Because we're not the worst of what we've done.
[00:16:57] Speaker C: We're not the best of what we've done. We're a mix of all of those things. And part of the process of writing a book was really trying to uncover the pain, right? And to turn that pain into power. And look at, like. That's why I called it a remembering.
[00:17:13] Speaker B: And part of being a remember.
[00:17:15] Speaker C: If you look at the word remember, it's a member. Like, a member could be your body. Like, how do I put myself back together? And part of it was me putting myself back together. On one level. Part of me was putting the family, remembering the family, and putting a family back together as a whole. So I didn't want to just create this sunshine and flower story, right? Because that's not real life.
[00:17:43] Speaker B: Real life is like, some stuff happens.
[00:17:46] Speaker C: Some stuff happens, some good stuff happens, some bad stuff happen. We have to make choices.
Sometimes the choices we make are because of our environment. Sometimes the choices we make are things that we personally just go after.
[00:17:59] Speaker B: I didn't want to cherry pick some.
[00:18:02] Speaker C: Things I had to cherry pick, but I didn't really want to cherry pick. I really want to tell the whole story and lay it all out there.
[00:18:08] Speaker B: And it is what it is.
[00:18:11] Speaker C: Those scenes when I write about the use of drugs or drugs being around were things that were very much vivid in my memory and at points in.
[00:18:21] Speaker B: My life caused a lot of shame internally, right?
[00:18:26] Speaker C: But also realizing that as I got older, I'm realizing everybody, family on a block was dealing with the same situations. And I wasn't the only one who saw that stuff. Everybody saw what was going on, but I was dealing with it as a child and as a teenager. So you have to look back. And it's like, as I'm looking back.
[00:18:49] Speaker B: I'm also trying to heal that shame that little tiff felt about seeing things.
[00:18:58] Speaker C: That happened between my grandmother and things that were the dynamics that was going on in a family.
To heal myself, but also to forgive everybody who was involved with that trauma that they were putting on themselves, the trauma that they were putting on the.
[00:19:17] Speaker B: Children in a family, unbeknownst to them.
[00:19:20] Speaker C: I don't know that they cared, that they were they aware, I don't know.
But literally wanting to kind of go back in the past and forgive them, find that way of like, how am I going to forgive?
[00:19:32] Speaker B: How do I forgive my grandmother for the things that she did to me?
[00:19:38] Speaker C: But how does my mother forgive her mother for the things she did to her? But then what was my grandmother going through that made her the way she was?
[00:19:48] Speaker B: None of us come out the womb.
[00:19:50] Speaker C: Like, oh, I'm a hurt people. I'm going to be a drug addict. I'm going to be this. We all come. We all start with goodness, and it's just circumstances and things that change that.
[00:20:03] Speaker B: But that doesn't mean that I wanted.
[00:20:05] Speaker C: Her remembered for the worst.
[00:20:08] Speaker B: I wanted her remembered for the family.
[00:20:11] Speaker C: Woman that she was, that she never abandoned her children, that she stayed and she did whatever she had to do, but she was always there.
[00:20:20] Speaker B: And that's a choice.
She could have made other choices.
Yeah.
[00:20:26] Speaker A: And I think that's a good point that you make in regards to being able to forgive someone.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: Right.
[00:20:33] Speaker A: We see the things that they may have done or are doing to us and just take it as face value. And not knowing that there's a deeper kind of trauma that's going on that's allowed them to hurt us in that way.
And that kind of brings me to my next question. You touch on a lot of topics in the book, so we're barely scratching the surface in what we're talking about now, but you talk about, like we just mentioned, drugs. There's a lot of things, depression, grief. One of the things that I wanted to mention was the trauma, the trauma that a lot of your family members went through. I think we can all say that we've all been touched by it. We've experienced some form of trauma in our life, whether personally or someone else in the family. And one big thing that stood out for me was this thread I saw between you, your mother, and your grandmother, which was sexual trauma. Your grandmother mentioned that she was in an inappropriate relationship with an older man while she was in high school. There was the reference to your mother being promiscuous when she was younger. And then you also shared when it got to your story, that you were sexually active at a young age and would later be a survivor of sexual assault.
And just for everyone listening, we've talked about this, and there was nothing off the table for Tiffany in this conversation. She wants to open up about things so that it may help someone in the process. So I'm not a therapist, but while I was reading that and just kind of sharing each woman's experience with this trauma, it seemed that it wasn't a coincidence that all of you experienced some type of trauma in that form. So having had time to reflect on your family and the book since it was written, what are your thoughts on that specific topic of connection? Or do you see it as a connection?
[00:23:00] Speaker B: I do.
[00:23:00] Speaker C: And, I mean, I think you can look at it from a really macro.
[00:23:04] Speaker B: Level of black women. Like, if I just look at it.
[00:23:09] Speaker C: From that level, there is a historical data on sexual assault on black women, assault on black women in general, from a very high level of women, black women in particular, throughout being in the enslavement period, et cetera, always having to.
[00:23:29] Speaker B: Deal with some sort of sexual trauma towards.
[00:23:34] Speaker C: On their person and having to figure out ways to protect themselves from sexual assault. So I look at it in terms of our connection through the generations, just one level. On that level, right. Then, as I look at it from a family perspective, I look at it.
[00:23:51] Speaker B: As the lack of male protection, the.
[00:23:55] Speaker C: Lack of fathers in all three of our situations. My grandmother, because her father, she was basically being raised by her aunt and.
[00:24:05] Speaker B: Her grandmother, really her aunt, because her.
[00:24:09] Speaker C: Grandmother died when she was eight.
[00:24:11] Speaker B: My mother being raised by her mother.
[00:24:15] Speaker C: Her biofather, stepfather, really being out the picture when she was like a really little girl. So again, she's being raised by women, moving about the city of Chicago as.
[00:24:28] Speaker B: A teenage girl, my situation also being.
[00:24:32] Speaker C: Raised by a single mother, solo parent, my father not being around after I was like a little girl.
[00:24:40] Speaker B: So I look at that being an.
[00:24:43] Speaker C: Epidemic in our communities of single parents.
[00:24:48] Speaker B: A lot of single mothers raising single children. Not to say that sexual assault doesn't.
[00:24:53] Speaker C: Happen to boys, because it does. It definitely happens to boys also. But yeah, that's the connecting thread. We were all single, all single parents, all in a single family situation. So not having that protection of fathers who I always looked at it like if my father had been around, I wouldn't have been seeking that protection from men, seeking that favor, seeking that understanding from men and being more showing itself as being sexually active at a young age and being sexually assaulted again.
In our families, we don't talk about sexual interactions and how one thing leads to another.
We just tell girls, don't do it, whatever. But we don't really teach the physiology of connection. Like what happens when you go from.
[00:25:51] Speaker B: Holding a boy's hand to kissing a.
[00:25:54] Speaker C: Boy a little bit to a deeper kiss. We don't teach what that does to their bodies and then what that does in terms of connection, of what happens when you start having sex with people and you having sex with everybody they have sex with depending on what you're doing.
So we don't have enough real conversations with our young people, girls and boys in our families. So I think we wound up leaving our young people because I don't want to just say it's girls all the time, but we just don't leave our young people really educated enough and we.
[00:26:32] Speaker B: Leave them sort of just open to.
[00:26:37] Speaker C: All kinds of situationships that happen because they don't know, like, oh, if I invite this boy over, they only thinking of it on a little light level, but they don't know the worst that could happen.
They don't think that far ahead to the bad outcomes.
Rape could be one of them, being pregnant could be one of them, all kinds of situations could be one of them. They could let somebody else in your house, like, you just don't know what could happen to you. So that's kind of how I look at it. It took me a long time to come to this point where I could even talk about it. And I had a conversation with some sisters today about young people in our community and they're getting together and not necessarily sex, but boys and girls talking and all of that. And I was really like, I was like, I got to do this podcast, but I would love to have had further that conversation with them because I think there's some real talk that needs.
[00:27:38] Speaker B: To happen with our young people before they venture into things that they have.
[00:27:44] Speaker C: No idea, that road that they're walking down.
That's the sort of micro macro way I look at the connection between myself, my mother and my grandmother, and all.
[00:27:59] Speaker B: Of us being survivors in a sense.
[00:28:02] Speaker A: I can definitely relate to that on so many levels.
So many levels. And when I was reading the book, it hit me. It hit me in a way that lets me know that what you're saying, I think, definitely has truth to it, that we don't have those real conversations at an early age and that we don't prepare our young people enough for those situations. So I thank you for opening up about that, not just here, but also in the book as well, because I think it at least opens the door for people to think about it and what the effects that can have on people when you don't. When you don't talk about those hard conversations. I know that takes a lot of vulnerability to do that, to talk about.
[00:28:57] Speaker B: It, to write about it, to think.
[00:28:59] Speaker A: About it, to go to therapy for it, to try to heal from that. So I want to kind of touch on that vulnerability. This book ends with your story, and you actually share entries from your personal journal that you've kept over the years.
And had you not even stated that in the book, I wouldn't have known. I definitely wouldn't have known. I would have thought it was just.
[00:29:24] Speaker B: A piece of the book that you.
[00:29:26] Speaker A: Had related in that way. So as an author, how important is it to be vulnerable, and were there any moments of vulnerability when speaking with your family while writing the book and from your experience while writing the book, how important is vulnerability for healing?
[00:29:47] Speaker C: For me, it's extremely important to be vulnerable in writing, period, because I think.
[00:29:53] Speaker B: That'S how you connect with your reader.
[00:29:55] Speaker C: Because you don't know who's going to.
[00:29:56] Speaker B: Pick up your book, who's going to relate to it.
[00:30:00] Speaker C: Early, when I have beta readers who were reading the early parts of the book, and it was some of their comments that made me open up even more because they connected with the family stories. And they was like, that's my family. Like I was dealing with this. And they might have been from Ohio. They were from wherever they were from, and they were different races, come from different cultural backgrounds, but they all related to the family story. Even though it's about an african american family, they still connected with it. So that let me know I was going in an okay direction.
You asked about my family.
That's a challenging conversation, which is still ongoing, where I've still had just recently.
[00:30:53] Speaker B: I had to have a very kind of tough conversation that I really couldn't.
[00:30:58] Speaker C: Have had two years ago with family.
[00:31:02] Speaker B: That took issue with my storytelling, and.
[00:31:07] Speaker C: I really had to sort of level set with them, like, this is my.
[00:31:13] Speaker B: Story, it's my mother's story. And you shouldn't really take it so.
[00:31:20] Speaker C: Personally as though, because I'd include everything that you wanted me to include.
[00:31:25] Speaker B: But this is about really honoring my mother, my grandmother, and my great great aunt.
[00:31:32] Speaker C: It's taken me a while to be.
[00:31:34] Speaker B: More confident in my position about being.
[00:31:38] Speaker C: An author and my own liberties that I get to take that it may not be approved. I didn't need everybody's approval. Like, I'm need you sign this waiver and be like, it's okay for me to publish this book.
Think that that's what I should have done.
But I'm like, you could tell your own story.
[00:32:01] Speaker B: That was my point in that you.
[00:32:04] Speaker C: Don'T have to be some rich, famous person.
The everyday life and struggle of most of us as black women is a.
[00:32:13] Speaker B: Motion picture movie, right?
For real, to get from a to b, it's like, whoa, she had to do all that.
[00:32:22] Speaker C: Like, sure did. It took a whole lot finagling of figuring out and how I'm going to get to work, how I'm going to take care of these kids. All of that is a story.
[00:32:32] Speaker B: It's like, there's no person more creative and resourceful than a single black mother. Period period dot is my best friend with period Dot.
[00:32:42] Speaker C: But the family. You talk about vulnerability.
[00:32:46] Speaker B: It's been very challenging with my own family in this book because I think sometimes people are not ready to confront everything, the trauma.
[00:32:57] Speaker C: But I think if they actually read.
[00:32:59] Speaker B: The book, they actually read the book.
[00:33:01] Speaker C: They would see the whole picture and they would understand.
[00:33:05] Speaker B: And they would even understand me better.
[00:33:08] Speaker C: Because I'm just at a place where I'm 48 and I'm at a place now where I'm just kind of like.
[00:33:16] Speaker B: You can give me, you cannot, you.
[00:33:17] Speaker C: Can leave it, whatever. And I'm choosing at this point in.
[00:33:21] Speaker B: My life to create family.
[00:33:25] Speaker C: My friends are my family.
[00:33:27] Speaker B: I'm choosing more who I want to.
[00:33:29] Speaker C: Be around, who I want to create community with.
Whereas in the past, I was more like, this is my family, and I got to be, and I got to deal.
[00:33:40] Speaker B: No, I don't. I really don't. And I'm not. So I'm just at a different place now.
[00:33:46] Speaker C: And I love them and I respect them and I uplift them. That's why I have all the pictures in the book. Because even though I couldn't, in words, tell everybody's story, I felt very strongly.
[00:33:59] Speaker B: That the pictures told a story, too.
[00:34:01] Speaker C: And it told a deeper story of our family. And even though we didn't have a lot of money, I felt like the richness of our family showed in those photographs of all of us together at graduations. And I think that's my treasure. My house is burning down. What am I going to get? My pictures. But now I feel like those pictures live on because now they're in this book that lots of people have.
[00:34:30] Speaker B: So I don't have to kill myself.
[00:34:33] Speaker C: Trying to get these pictures out of a burning house because they're documented, and those stories are documented.
[00:34:39] Speaker B: To live on that vulnerability is something.
[00:34:43] Speaker C: But that comes like you talked about, therapy.
I've gone through therapy for many years, trying to think, what year was that?
[00:34:53] Speaker B: Probably 2004, 2005.
[00:34:56] Speaker C: I started going to therapy after my first son passed away.
[00:35:01] Speaker B: And so through the years, I've worked.
[00:35:04] Speaker C: With various therapists, coaches in different forms.
I'm a believer in therapy and just talking it out and being able to.
[00:35:18] Speaker B: Get yourself on a better note, figure out yourself.
[00:35:23] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely think that's necessary.
On traumas, on just moving forward, moving past things, and really understanding who you.
[00:35:40] Speaker B: Are as a person. Right.
[00:35:44] Speaker A: And so I do think your pictures.
[00:35:49] Speaker B: Added to that sense of family that you mentioned.
[00:35:55] Speaker A: And if you're at a place where you can see that within the book, you will.
And some people, it just may take them longer to get there. They may never get there. But I saw it when I looked in the book as far as just.
[00:36:14] Speaker B: The sense of family that was wove.
[00:36:19] Speaker A: Throughout, whether it was in the storytelling or in the pictures. And really, the pictures added another depth to me because it not only allowed me to see your family, but I saw my family in your family.
You had high school pictures in there. It was like younger pictures. And then it was one picture of your grandmother where she just had this stance, like, I know I look good, right?
[00:36:51] Speaker B: Leaning on that wall.
[00:36:55] Speaker A: And that was a time, like a period of time where if I was to pull a picture from my photo.
[00:37:05] Speaker B: Album.
[00:37:09] Speaker A: You would see my grandmother with that same or a similar stance. So I really appreciated that.
And I think other people will appreciate it also. Even down to the hairstyles, right?
I was in the south. I've been in the south my whole life.
But you were in Chicago during that time. Same hairstyles.
Very similar. So I think your book shows a lot of different things. If you're just open to look at.
[00:37:45] Speaker B: What it's telling you, let's talk a.
[00:37:47] Speaker A: Little bit about faith. Aunt Daisy, she was involved in the nation, the Nation of Islam, and that was a piece of the faith within the book in some sections and in other sections, there wasn't that much talk about faith until we got to your story.
And there was an instance where you mentioned a period of time when you were still in high school, and you began to learn more about Islam.
And you would go to the masjid, you will wear your hijab to school. So one day when you were at the masjid, one of the brothers seemed to take an interest in you, and you ran away and never returned until later in your life. So while I was reading it, one of my questions was, I wanted to know what scared you.
Was it just a brother that scared you, or was there something deeper than that? And you mentioned you thought about Islam on and off afterwards. So what was your spiritual journey like throughout your life, and how has it shaped you into who you are today?
[00:38:56] Speaker C: To start with the last question, I.
[00:38:59] Speaker B: Mean, my spiritual journey, Christian, pretty much my whole life.
[00:39:02] Speaker C: I mean, I was baptized. Me and my mother got baptized together.
I think I was seven or eight. Mount Pleasant Missionary Baptist Church, which was right around the corner from my house in Chicago that my whole family went to.
[00:39:18] Speaker B: We all lived in an apartment building.
[00:39:21] Speaker C: And walk down to the corner, you make a left to the next block. That was the church. So I always grew up from there, singing in choirs, just because arts and performance was always a big part of my upbringing in the community. And so, yeah, I think I was.
[00:39:40] Speaker B: A sophomore in high school when I.
[00:39:45] Speaker C: Started to sort of start going to Mos Marion in Chicago, which is right down the street in Stony island from my house.
And I would always kind of. Sometimes I would go to, you know, because that was just something you did in Chicago. You can like, oh, Savior's day coming up, you just go. Whether you were Muslim or not, Farrakhan.
[00:40:05] Speaker B: Was just like a part of our.
[00:40:09] Speaker C: Know, like our upbringing. You heard him on the radio.
[00:40:12] Speaker B: Like, Farrakhan was just around.
[00:40:15] Speaker C: So then I started getting more interested in just. And I would go to the Saturday classes at the mosque, and I even wrote the letter to become a member.
[00:40:30] Speaker B: Of the Nation of Islam.
[00:40:31] Speaker C: I remember writing it like, a thousand times. Not 1000, that's exaggeration, but 1015 times. I literally remember. I really wish I would have still had copies of that, but I do remember writing it many times.
[00:40:46] Speaker B: And when the brother approached me, I.
[00:40:52] Speaker C: Think why I ran, because I was always really shy, even though I was the oldest, even though I was, like, out in the city, going to school, getting on the bus, like just a city girl.
I hated when people looked at me. I hated when men would try to approach me. It just really scared me, honestly.
[00:41:15] Speaker B: And so being a muslim now, I.
[00:41:18] Speaker C: Know he was so wrong for coming up to me. You know what I'm saying? The way he did. He never should have done that, right? And because I was doing that journey, I was very much doing it solo.
[00:41:30] Speaker B: Nobody had really, like, hey, little sister.
[00:41:33] Speaker C: What you doing when they see me coming?
I don't know, but nobody really approached me. Even the sisters didn't really like, I mean, I would just come, I would sit down, I would listen, but nobody.
[00:41:48] Speaker B: Reached out and took me and was.
[00:41:52] Speaker C: Like, what's your name?
[00:41:53] Speaker B: What are you doing here?
[00:41:56] Speaker C: How old are you?
Nobody ever really took me under their wing, so I felt very lonely in a journey. And then when the guy approached me, I was kind of like, ooh, just wig me out. And so I just kind of slowly stopped going.
I kind of went the whole other direction, honestly, after that, and was really more with boyfriends and just doing stuff, even though I was still getting straight.
[00:42:24] Speaker B: A's, in school, scholarship student, honor student.
[00:42:27] Speaker C: Doing all of that. But I still had this sort of other life.
When I was out with my friends or with my boyfriends, I was just doing stuff that I really should not have been doing, and that was very dangerous, honestly.
I'm very grateful that I got out of Chicago. I won't say unscathed, because the sexual assault happened right before I left for college, but I got out with my life, and to me, that was, like, enough at that time period, but, yeah, but my upbringing, very much christian gospel.
I went to Catholic grammar school, elementary school, but it was, like, african american Catholic school in a community, so we.
[00:43:13] Speaker B: Still had that flavor.
[00:43:16] Speaker C: Even though it was catholic.
It still had that gospel music. We still did choir, even though it.
[00:43:25] Speaker B: Was still, like, full out catholic mass.
[00:43:29] Speaker C: But we still did a lot of.
[00:43:30] Speaker B: Things that are considered very southern.
[00:43:33] Speaker A: So how has, I guess, your faith journey helped shape you into the Tiffany we see today?
[00:43:42] Speaker C: My faith journey actually starts really out.
[00:43:45] Speaker B: Of church, and I talk about this.
[00:43:47] Speaker C: In a book, having an out of body experience as a young person. I think I was seven when I fell, and I say bust my head to the white me show, but I literally did.
[00:44:00] Speaker B: I bust my head right here, and.
[00:44:03] Speaker C: I had an out of body experience. And it wasn't two years later that I really was like, wait a minute. That's weird.
[00:44:09] Speaker B: Why do I remember my memory of.
[00:44:11] Speaker C: That is being above my body and seeing my family and everybody holding me and all of that?
[00:44:18] Speaker B: And so that experience really kind of sets the mood for my spiritual walk.
[00:44:27] Speaker C: Because I understood from that very young.
[00:44:30] Speaker B: Age that there was more to the world than what we see, than more.
[00:44:34] Speaker C: Than just the physical. So it really kind of tapped me into that spiritual side of life.
[00:44:39] Speaker B: And that always kind of went forward.
[00:44:41] Speaker C: In my life, even in my spiritual journey in terms of faith and church and things like that, in an organized fashion. As I went through, I.
[00:44:56] Speaker B: When I lost my first son, Oliver, he was still born. We took pictures after I birthed him.
[00:45:06] Speaker C: And so we had some time with the baby right after I delivered him.
[00:45:11] Speaker B: And this is 2004, so we were.
[00:45:16] Speaker C: Just, that was, like, for the beginning when people were using digital. Back before then, it was like you.
[00:45:22] Speaker B: Had your little pictures.
[00:45:23] Speaker C: You take them to Walgreens or whatever, you get them developed. But this is like the beginning of digital photography.
[00:45:28] Speaker B: Like, you're literally, whatever you're photographing is like, was there. And in those pictures, there was this white orb around him, around the baby in these pictures.
[00:45:43] Speaker C: So that was just another example of.
[00:45:45] Speaker B: Like, there's more, right?
[00:45:47] Speaker C: That this baby spirit could clearly seen in the pictures.
[00:45:54] Speaker B: Within that 30, 45 minutes after he was birthed, that his.
[00:45:59] Speaker C: Spirit was still there because it was like a haze as I'm holding him between him and me and his father and him. You could see it in the pictures. And so just another example of my.
[00:46:14] Speaker B: Life of, like, okay, God, it's more.
[00:46:18] Speaker C: It's more than what we can see. And so the spirit world is real.
[00:46:24] Speaker B: Then moving into.
[00:46:29] Speaker C: Questioning things, even after that, having all these questions of, like, why did God, you know, take my baby? And, you know, and now I'm left without, you know, nothing, and, you know, then dealing with depression after that and all of those things and just being able to be quiet and work with.
[00:46:46] Speaker B: Therapists and find positivity, even in the dark places. And all of that leads me up.
[00:46:56] Speaker C: To moving to Atlanta, searching and deciding to become Muslim. And that was 2009, so it's been 15 years next month. So it's been an incredible life, a life of peace.
[00:47:12] Speaker B: And I still feel like I don't know anything.
[00:47:16] Speaker C: I know a little bit, but it's like Islam.
I learned a lot even from my son, who's 13 now. And I'm like, he's like, with Arabic and all these things. He's like, oh, mom is easy.
[00:47:27] Speaker B: And I'm like, no, it's not easy.
[00:47:32] Speaker C: I'm just excited for the few sores that I know and just trying to continually work at it.
But it's been a peace and an ease to being a Muslim that most people don't understand. They think it's complicated. Oh, you oppressed? And I'm like, you need to meet some of these muslim women. You don't know what you're talking about.
[00:47:58] Speaker B: But it's not what people think, and it's a lot easier.
[00:48:04] Speaker C: It's a lot more peaceful than most.
[00:48:08] Speaker B: People know, but it's the number one growing religion in the world.
[00:48:12] Speaker C: So people are. They are interested.
There's a lot of reverts or converts, however you want to say it.
[00:48:20] Speaker B: But, yeah, it's been a good journey.
[00:48:23] Speaker C: It's something like when people stop practicing Islam, I'm like, what?
I can't even imagine not being Muslim. And I'm very happy. Know the community that I'm a part mean, you can't get better than Atlanta for being a black Muslim. And the community that I'm raising my.
[00:48:42] Speaker B: Son know is a really beautiful know.
[00:48:49] Speaker A: Yeah, I can relate to a lot of the things that you've talked about, especially with coming from a different religious background and people having these misconceptions about Muslims and Islam and having that own journey for myself and my mom coming to me one day a few months or maybe a year after I embraced Islam and saying, I really see a change in you, that peace that you get.
And she didn't understand it in the beginning when I embraced Islam, it was just a healing thing for me to see that she saw how my faith was helping me grow.
We've talked about faith fortitude and touched a little bit on the forgiveness. So where does that come in? Where does the forgiveness come in as it relates to your book in your life?
[00:49:50] Speaker C: Forgiveness comes in similar to what I.
[00:49:53] Speaker B: Spoke of earlier with helping my mother find forgiveness towards her mother and me.
[00:50:02] Speaker C: Having some forgiveness for my mother, too.
[00:50:04] Speaker B: Because there's things that she did in.
[00:50:07] Speaker C: My upbringing as a teenager that I had to forgive her for and just the hardness of life and the things.
[00:50:17] Speaker B: That she had to do to raise.
[00:50:20] Speaker C: My brother and I, and then just really understanding her pain differently. Right. Putting it in perspective as an adult woman now looking at my mother as two adult women and looking back and.
[00:50:33] Speaker B: Like, man, she did a lot.
[00:50:36] Speaker C: How'd she do that on $25,000 a year, even though that was a lot of the money she was making in.
[00:50:43] Speaker B: The relatively better than many women in.
[00:50:49] Speaker C: Her stature, only having, like, a high school diploma. But it's just perspective and being able to look back to remember and to be like, I got to forgive her, she got to forgive.
Making that forgiveness, pulling it forward. But then also, man, I hope my kids forgive me for yelling, screaming for whatever, and be able to look at my story in perspective to the challenges that I was going through and the things I had to overcome, but also.
[00:51:23] Speaker B: Sort of foreshadowing that we don't still need those things.
[00:51:28] Speaker C: That faith and forgiveness.
That faith, fortitude and forgiveness.
[00:51:35] Speaker B: I really have to say, okay, Allah, I still need those things.
[00:51:41] Speaker C: I still got to use those as tenets going into the future, because life kept going.
When I said the end, life kept lifing.
And those are tenants that I really.
[00:51:55] Speaker B: Have had to lean on and remember going forward to the now, to the.
[00:52:02] Speaker C: Today, to the tomorrow, and being able to laugh, laughter could have been another adding that to the book.
[00:52:14] Speaker B: But just like life is real, and I had to just keep pushing forward.
[00:52:20] Speaker C: And knowing that this is not the end of the story, that this book wasn't the end of my story. It was really, in some ways, the.
[00:52:27] Speaker B: Beginning of a new period of my.
[00:52:30] Speaker C: Life that I was just, like, really documenting. And even though things are different today, I really had to learn to look at this phase of life that I wrote about as really sacred because I had no idea what was coming. But Allah did. Allah said, I want you to tell your mother's story because her time is.
[00:52:53] Speaker B: About to end on this world.
Doing that work with her was very.
[00:53:00] Speaker C: Healing and cathartic for me. As she became, she transitioned into an ancestor.
Having documented her story and having cared for her through nursing homes and her illness in 2020, 2021, really 2021, having that time with her and being able.
[00:53:22] Speaker B: To just look back and be like.
[00:53:24] Speaker C: Man, I had no idea what was coming. But again, Allah is the best of planners, and he said, write this book. And I wrote this book. And so I'm glad I was obedient and had the fortitude to complete it and make sure that my mother saw it complete.
[00:53:43] Speaker B: And it was nothing better for me.
[00:53:47] Speaker C: Than to hear my mother say, you.
[00:53:48] Speaker B: Did a good job.
[00:53:51] Speaker C: That's it.
[00:53:51] Speaker B: I don't care if nobody bought a book. I mean, I do.
[00:53:54] Speaker C: I want you to all buy the book. Buy the book, read a book, all of that. But I mean, in my heart of hearts, what does it mean? That's the best part was when my.
[00:54:04] Speaker B: Mother said, you really did a good job, and when she could open up and tell me her story and her pain, and we could really have a real heart to heart about what I.
[00:54:19] Speaker C: Wrote about her mother. And I'm like, do you think anything's wrong? And here, should I change anything?
[00:54:26] Speaker B: Is anything that you're not comfortable with?
[00:54:30] Speaker C: And she was like, no, because my.
[00:54:32] Speaker B: Mom was a voracious reader.
[00:54:37] Speaker C: She just had books everywhere.
And it wasn't just half of stuff I read. Like, none of this stuff. She would read none of that stuff. That's all history. And she was like, love story and romance and she read that kind of stuff. And she got into the Terry McMillan's and as those kind of authors came about and Toni Morrison and things, like, you know, I knew she was going.
[00:54:59] Speaker B: To read it because she was a.
[00:55:05] Speaker C: That, to me, that was like, the best part. Not that you asked that question, but the best part for me was just.
[00:55:11] Speaker B: My mom being proud and knowing that.
[00:55:15] Speaker C: She saw the COVID Because the COVID.
[00:55:17] Speaker B: Was like a really big project that.
[00:55:20] Speaker C: Started with very arts and crafty and then had to kind of work with the COVID designers to get it because.
[00:55:28] Speaker B: They was not getting it at first.
[00:55:31] Speaker C: I was like, that is an apple pie. No, that's not what I want. Let me send you a picture of a bean pie. I want that on the COVID And just even the name of the book maintain keeping it the bean pie. There was a friend of mine who was like, no, you need to name it the bean pie, period. And I was like, okay. Because, I mean, I waffled like, should I name it the bean?
I had a lot of insecurities about telling a story.
It's like, are people going to question me? Are people going to be like, you don't know what you're talking about. Because I get those pioneered who come up to me when I'm bending.
[00:56:08] Speaker B: Like, where you from, sister?
[00:56:10] Speaker C: Where your auntie from?
She from Detroit?
[00:56:15] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:56:16] Speaker C: They give me those questions and be like, let me see what she going to say. She know what she's talking about. So it's like, I was very much.
[00:56:25] Speaker B: Looked at this book from a scholarship point of view.
[00:56:29] Speaker C: That's why I wanted to make sure it was very thorough in how I was telling the story and setting the.
[00:56:37] Speaker B: Scenes with each person.
[00:56:40] Speaker C: And then I had some really incredible editors who just worked with me through the process of how to order the book.
Because I think originally it was more me first.
[00:56:51] Speaker B: And I went from present to the past, and then.
[00:56:55] Speaker C: So then I flipped it from the past to the present.
[00:56:58] Speaker B: So that took work going from a.
[00:57:03] Speaker C: Manuscript to a full out book.
[00:57:06] Speaker B: And then the journal part of my part was added towards the end because.
[00:57:12] Speaker C: I sent my editor a little bit.
[00:57:14] Speaker B: I was like, because it was like.
[00:57:16] Speaker C: Kind of the end of my mother's story.
[00:57:18] Speaker B: And I was like.
[00:57:19] Speaker C: And I talked about myself as a little kid in her story.
[00:57:22] Speaker B: But then I'm like, how do I.
[00:57:26] Speaker C: Continue the story? And then my editor is like, well, write a little bit about yourself.
[00:57:31] Speaker B: I'm like, I show her a stack of journals. I was like, you see this? I got my whole life pretty much documented.
[00:57:39] Speaker C: I would have never been able to remember the type of details that's in.
[00:57:42] Speaker B: There had I not been journaling.
[00:57:45] Speaker C: So I'm a big believer in journals.
[00:57:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:57:48] Speaker B: That's why I thought that had you.
[00:57:51] Speaker A: Not stated they were journals, I would have thought, because they are very detailed, as if you were writing it, you were coming up with it or thinking about it as you were writing the book.
[00:58:04] Speaker C: It was edited down because it wasn't. Like some days were compressed. Like, the stories may cover multiple days of me writing in my real journal.
[00:58:15] Speaker B: But then I would try to streamline.
[00:58:18] Speaker C: It as much as I could.
[00:58:19] Speaker B: So then that's what sort of made the book go a little longer, because.
[00:58:24] Speaker C: They really wanted the book to be, like, 50,000 words, and then that pushed it into 75,000 words, and it became.
[00:58:33] Speaker B: A bigger, thicker book, which I think.
[00:58:36] Speaker C: Why so many people got it sitting on a shelf, because they're like, oh, that's a long book, but I like thick books.
[00:58:43] Speaker A: The bigger it is, the more I want it.
[00:58:47] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:58:47] Speaker B: And most people who've read it have said when they finally picked it up.
[00:58:53] Speaker C: They didn't put it down and said they were done. And it was like, overnight I could text, Facebook messages. Like, Tiffany, I finally read your book.
[00:59:01] Speaker B: Oh, my God. Like, girl, I had no idea.
[00:59:06] Speaker C: I'm like, please write a review on Amazon.
[00:59:08] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:59:10] Speaker C: Tell your friends to pick up the book and read a lot.
[00:59:15] Speaker A: Well, it's good to know that you experienced this with your mother before she passed, that you all were able to share it and that she was able to heal on some things as well, not just yourself.
So that's a really beautiful thing that I like. And that you share in the book also, that you all were going through this, even though necessarily that wasn't how it began, but towards the end.
[00:59:47] Speaker B: It.
[00:59:47] Speaker A: Was beautiful to read that part. And then you also have a video with her on your website, right?
[00:59:54] Speaker B: Yes, on thebeanpie.com.
[00:59:59] Speaker A: That was done before the book.
[01:00:01] Speaker C: Yeah, that was like, 2015 or 2016. So. Well, before, I mean, had thoughts of writing, but that's really when I was getting into just making the bean pies.
[01:00:13] Speaker B: And all of that. I may have been making them for a while, but I was still early in my sort of walk. And then that was just connection with.
[01:00:25] Speaker C: Some people in the community who were documentarians, and me telling my story at one event and then somebody else telling that person like, oh, did you know that Tiffany?
[01:00:34] Speaker B: And then.
[01:00:37] Speaker C: Just getting to know people and how the community is, somebody's cousin, brother, it's all connected. And so then they came to the house over that Thanksgiving break, think 2015 or 2016, and did a recording.
[01:00:54] Speaker A: Now, you mentioned that you have a son. He's 13, right?
And so as you're completing this book or after you finish the book, is there something good or bad that made you think, okay, hey, that's because of my mom or my grandmother. Something that you didn't know or didn't reveal itself before you started on the journey of writing your book. Something that made you say, like, in your relationship with your son.
I get this from my mom, this generational thing, like you pass on. Like, I'm doing this because my mom or my grandmother did it with me.
[01:01:33] Speaker C: I would say just my love for.
[01:01:37] Speaker B: Cooking, I think, is something that I get from my mother, but I see now is very generational because my grandmother really could. She could throw down and so could my mother.
[01:01:52] Speaker C: So I think I definitely get that love for cooking.
[01:01:55] Speaker B: And really not even. I think it's sometimes not even about.
[01:01:58] Speaker C: The cooking, but it's about what the cooking does and how it brings people together. So I love socializing and having people come over and cooking for people. I definitely think I get that. I think another important component to all of this is how it was.
[01:02:16] Speaker B: Really, my son, he used to ask.
[01:02:18] Speaker C: Me questions all the time, because when I first started the book, he was.
[01:02:22] Speaker B: Like, nine, so he was nine.
[01:02:23] Speaker C: And he would always say, mama, what did you do as a kid? What kind of cartoons did you watch? And what was your favorite food? And just all these questions that I imagine a nine year old, because they talk a lot, asking their parents or their mother. And in his asking me those questions.
[01:02:43] Speaker B: I was like, I don't even know those answers for my mother. And at that time, I was, like, 44.
[01:02:51] Speaker C: The year is going fast.
That's how I started asking my mother.
[01:02:55] Speaker B: All these questions, like, was the same.
[01:02:57] Speaker C: Questions that her grandson was asking me. And I started asking her, realizing, like, I really don't know my.
You know, she was a little irritated when I first started asking her all.
[01:03:09] Speaker B: These questions because at the same time.
[01:03:11] Speaker C: I'm writing a book, and I'm not necessarily. I'm just really asking her only about.
[01:03:14] Speaker B: Undis originally, like, tell me about undis.
[01:03:18] Speaker C: Things she had told me in the past, but now I really want you to tell me.
I want you to knock the cobwebs.
[01:03:26] Speaker B: Off the back files, them deep, deep.
[01:03:29] Speaker C: Deep, dark files in your brain, and tell me everything. Again, because now I'm writing it down.
[01:03:35] Speaker B: Now I'm documenting.
[01:03:37] Speaker C: I'm having this idea for this book.
[01:03:40] Speaker B: And that kind of led me to.
[01:03:42] Speaker C: Asking her questions about herself. And that's what kind of opened up the conversations about my grandmother and their relationship and really seeing and feeling the pain that my mother was still in.
[01:03:56] Speaker B: Her 60s, still harboring that was still really holding her back, in a sense, and helping her gain some understanding of that pain and how she could transform.
[01:04:11] Speaker C: It into healing for herself.
It was a little bit of tussling sometimes with my mother about that, but.
[01:04:19] Speaker B: I was okay with then.
[01:04:22] Speaker C: And then my mom got sick, so I had to go to Nashville a lot, and I spent a lot of time with her in a very vulnerable know, having to help her. And as she's lost a lot of mobility being in nursing homes and having to make decisions for her.
[01:04:41] Speaker B: And it really made us closer.
[01:04:44] Speaker C: It made also my brother and I closer in having to support my mother in that and a lot of decisions that had to be made for her at that time. And also having to have some hard conversations with my mother. Like, look, these people caring for you, I'm going to need you to not.
[01:05:01] Speaker B: Be mean.
[01:05:04] Speaker C: And really work on your people skills because I know you upset that you can't do this stuff for yourself now. So it was like a lot of.
[01:05:13] Speaker B: Sort of reverse roles, right, of mother.
[01:05:17] Speaker C: And child vulnerability that comes with that from her perspective, but also the sensitivity that I had to gain from my perspective of, like, this, your mother and.
[01:05:28] Speaker B: You going to be in this situation.
[01:05:30] Speaker C: In whatever time period Allah has set where you're going to decline at some point, and it may be this now.
[01:05:37] Speaker B: 13 year old picking you up, turning you, whatever the situation that Allah sets out.
[01:05:46] Speaker C: So having a level of sensitivity also for what it means to get older.
[01:05:51] Speaker B: And health, and what health means and.
[01:05:54] Speaker C: Having health issues off and on the last few years and really trying to deal with that myself.
And like, man, these years go because in 20 years from now, I'd be.
[01:06:07] Speaker B: The same age my mother was.
[01:06:09] Speaker C: And that 20 years seems like a blip. Now 48, I'm like, oh, in 20 years, I'll be 68. And I'm adding up how old my son's going to be. So it's like you feel that mortality and the time just seems so, it goes so fast.
It seems like it goes faster and.
[01:06:32] Speaker B: Faster the older you get.
[01:06:37] Speaker A: Are there still questions that are lingering for you, some that you were not able to answer while writing the book.
[01:06:47] Speaker C: Related to my mother?
[01:06:48] Speaker B: No.
I feel like I got some questions answered. There's relationships that still are kind of like open doors related to my biological.
[01:07:05] Speaker C: Grandfather'S side of the family. I've had some conversations with my cousin, his grandson. I've seen a picture of him that.
[01:07:15] Speaker B: I didn't have when I published a book.
[01:07:18] Speaker C: I'll never know what really happened between.
[01:07:22] Speaker B: My grandmother and this older man, but that was also a different time, a time period where men married young, really young girls.
[01:07:36] Speaker C: It was a different time period, but yet, and still, it's a complicated kind of story. So you know that there were secrets and there was all this stuff going on. So it's like trying to dismantle that. I don't really have questions about that. The questions I really do have, without going further into the past, when I.
[01:07:53] Speaker B: Started looking at, I got access to the latter day saints database, genealogical database.
[01:08:02] Speaker C: And so I was able to put.
[01:08:04] Speaker B: In.
[01:08:07] Speaker C: My fourth grandmother's information.
[01:08:11] Speaker B: And what I got back, I was like.
[01:08:15] Speaker C: Okay, she's from this family of 13 kids. And then when I took that information and I put that back in ancestry, I started getting more information. I started getting pictures and letters, know.
[01:08:30] Speaker B: Who is supposed to be her mother that clearly.
[01:08:35] Speaker C: I literally got a letter that was on ancestry that this woman, who was.
[01:08:40] Speaker B: My fifth grandmother wrote.
[01:08:42] Speaker C: And I'm like, from. And she's in Montgomery, Alabama.
[01:08:45] Speaker B: And I'm like, this is a white.
[01:08:47] Speaker C: Woman writing about her, negroes that work for her. And I'm like, but you see all the kids. You see her, there's 13 kids, and then her father has Esquire behind his name.
[01:09:01] Speaker B: And I'm like, what? So what?
[01:09:04] Speaker C: No black lawyers, I don't think, in that time period. And it's a clear. I mean, there's a picture of this.
[01:09:11] Speaker B: Woman, and I'm like, I'm looking at my grandmother, I'm like, okay, maybe you.
What's going on? I'm like, what's going on here?
[01:09:22] Speaker C: Because you part of this whole family, obviously, there's your mother. It says you're mother, your father.
[01:09:27] Speaker B: But when I look at her, I'm like, okay, yeah, you kind of do look biracial.
[01:09:34] Speaker C: But I know my african ancestry. I did the 23 andme. I had my mother do ancestry. So I know we like 77% west african and we like 20 something percent european.
[01:09:46] Speaker B: So how do you negotiate all of.
[01:09:50] Speaker C: That and, like, these stories? I'm like, okay, so we got obliga Alabama.
[01:09:54] Speaker B: Now we in Montgomery, which is like.
[01:09:56] Speaker C: Just an hour or two away from.
[01:10:01] Speaker B: Opalika, and we're sort of like, in.
[01:10:04] Speaker C: This plantation, they were all kind of sharecropping. But, I mean, so it's like, I got these.
Like, I'm really curious about Carrie.
[01:10:14] Speaker B: Like, was she, like, an outside kid inside? You know what saying?
[01:10:19] Speaker A: Right.
[01:10:20] Speaker B: Right. Was mama, fifth grandmother with somebody on the plantation, and she has this baby girl that I don't know.
[01:10:30] Speaker C: How do you hide an outside inside.
[01:10:32] Speaker B: Kid and you don't, woman usually, that's me.
[01:10:37] Speaker C: Bring the outside kids in. And it just occurred to me, even as I was saying, that the father could be the father, and it could have been a different mother. You know what I'm saying?
And she's listed as the children because.
[01:10:49] Speaker B: Those are all his children, but they.
[01:10:52] Speaker C: May not have been the mother's child, but it could have been the father's child with somebody else on a plantation. That's probably, like, more plausible than the other way, because I don't think a.
[01:11:03] Speaker B: Man would have accepted his wife having a baby with a black man versus the wives always having to accept the outside children that their husbands had with enslaved women.
[01:11:20] Speaker A: Is that something you're looking like you're currently.
[01:11:24] Speaker B: I mean, it's a curiosity.
[01:11:25] Speaker C: It's a curiosity. You said what questions I have. That's definitely a question.
[01:11:29] Speaker B: Is going further into the past, going.
[01:11:33] Speaker C: Back and really trying to find out more information.
[01:11:37] Speaker B: I keep blowing up skip from finding.
[01:11:40] Speaker C: Our histories because he's doing, like, a news type of show with regular people, and I'm like, look, I didn't already done a lot of work.
[01:11:47] Speaker B: Help me go back.
[01:11:49] Speaker C: You know what I'm saying?
I need him to really holl at me. I'll be in his dms.
I need your help.
[01:12:01] Speaker B: I need you to help me do this.
[01:12:02] Speaker C: But that's definitely a question I'm very curious about. I want to keep going back because I've done my african ancestry, so I know the tribes that my bachrilineal DNA is from.
[01:12:17] Speaker B: So it's like, there's a gap there.
[01:12:20] Speaker C: How can I fill that gap in?
And I really want to go to those places. Senegal, guinea, busot, and Sierra Leone. And I want to discover more about that african side. And that's that part that you like in the book. When I talk about.
It's kind of a little bit after that, when I talk about grandma Carrie talking about Mendinka and all of that, being able to connect the stories and.
[01:12:45] Speaker B: Going back into the know, it's going.
[01:12:48] Speaker C: To be crazy, right, to go to those tribes and then see what's the.
[01:12:56] Speaker B: You know.
[01:12:57] Speaker C: And I talk about that in the food portions. When I talk about the types of food in Africa and what we eat here in America, the cornbread and the greens, those are not just american things.
[01:13:11] Speaker B: Those are things that we brought from know.
[01:13:14] Speaker C: So a lot of even the way.
[01:13:15] Speaker B: We use beans is, again, a very african culinary tradition.
[01:13:21] Speaker C: And learning that and understanding that through.
[01:13:23] Speaker B: My research, it's like, oh, well, that's why she knew what to do with.
[01:13:27] Speaker C: These beans, because they were already cooking with beans, and she's from Alabama, they were growing beans.
[01:13:33] Speaker B: And that's just something that is a.
[01:13:40] Speaker C: Really culinary tradition and african american background. And unfortunately, we often allow so much.
[01:13:48] Speaker B: Of our culture has been co opted and we haven't benefited the way I think we should benefit.
[01:13:55] Speaker C: We need to benefit from our culinary traditions, not necessarily just from a monetary perspective, but just from a cultural understanding and cultural proliferation of our history and our cultures. And how much of the way people eat nationally. Everybody think they can make some greens. Everybody think they can make macaroni and cheese. Not to say those recipes are always the healthiest, know, macaroni and cheese was created by, was it Martha Washington's cook? A lot of times how we eat have been the second tier, has been the scraps and the things. But we made it beautiful, we made it flavorful and all of those things. But we're learning generationally to how to make those things healthier. For me, I know personally trying to keep the essence of that soul food, but also how not to get myself.
[01:14:45] Speaker B: Diabetes from the pork, the salt, the.
[01:14:51] Speaker C: Fat, unless it's good fat. So those types of things. So being able to balance those things.
[01:14:58] Speaker A: To me, this is not just a book, but as you stated before, it's a record. It's a living document for your family.
[01:15:07] Speaker B: Going forward that will, inshallah, forever be.
[01:15:12] Speaker A: In your family history. So it has inspired me. I will tell you that now. It was something that I had been thinking about for a while, but just hadn't been motivated enough to do. I suppose that's the best way to say it.
So what advice would you give to others who are also inspired by your book to do something similar to create a living family history? To learn more about their history going forward?
[01:15:45] Speaker C: The first thing I would recommend is sit with your elders immediately. Like immediately record them. Now, it's easy. I mean, we got phones, we got devices, we got stuff that will transcribe what you're saying, make captions and all that stuff to make it a lot easier. Have multiple conversations with all the elders that you can in your family and.
[01:16:09] Speaker B: Have them more than one time, because many of the questions that I asked my mother in the beginning, it took.
[01:16:19] Speaker C: A year and a half to get the answers to those questions.
And the more and more I dug, the more and more literally, like, the synapses in her brain would release the information because some of it was really buried. And she would just sometimes call and.
[01:16:36] Speaker B: Be like, oh, my God, I remember. I remember.
[01:16:40] Speaker C: And we could be talking about something else, and then she'd just go off into this story about something that I may have asked her months ago in some way. So it's not like a one off conversation.
[01:16:52] Speaker B: It's just record them.
[01:16:55] Speaker C: Not just the elders, but the aunties, the cousins, or whoever, talk to everybody, because everybody has little pieces of the.
[01:17:03] Speaker B: Story from their perspective.
[01:17:06] Speaker C: And I tried to kind of write.
[01:17:08] Speaker B: The chapters like that.
I was a narrator, like a fly.
[01:17:12] Speaker C: On a wall until I was born, and then I could sort of insert myself into the story.
[01:17:19] Speaker B: But definitely first have those conversations with.
[01:17:23] Speaker C: As many people as you can.
You don't write a book from beginning to end.
[01:17:31] Speaker B: You start by writing stories, right?
[01:17:35] Speaker C: The things, like, for you, I would say, the things that, like, trouble you the most. The things that keep coming up in your memory.
[01:17:45] Speaker B: Begin to just meditate, right. And begin to write those stories down.
[01:17:52] Speaker C: The parts that you remember, the things that are hard for you to say out loud.
[01:17:57] Speaker B: Just start to journal those out into little short stories.
[01:18:03] Speaker C: And don't worry about the orders and the chronological stuff. Don't worry about that stuff. Just get the stories down, because you'll be able to. If you can work with an editor, that'd be great to begin, somebody who's outside of you, who can help you string it together, and then you fill in stuff.
[01:18:24] Speaker B: And that's kind of like what I.
[01:18:26] Speaker C: Did, because I had about four different editors throughout the whole process, because I.
[01:18:31] Speaker B: Kept delaying the book. Delayed. Pushed it back.
[01:18:35] Speaker C: My mother got sick, pushed it back. So they worked with me, and they were fantastic.
[01:18:42] Speaker B: So that's what I would say.
[01:18:45] Speaker C: You never start, like, page one, my book.
[01:18:48] Speaker B: That's not how books are written.
[01:18:50] Speaker C: It's not in the course that I was in the publishing company. It was new degree press. Now they got a new name. But they always said that they taught us to write our first book as.
[01:19:01] Speaker B: Though it was our second book.
[01:19:04] Speaker C: And so just the formatting and how you do things and character development and all of that was just like. It was like a process.
[01:19:12] Speaker B: So that's the advice I would give, is, like, don't delay it. Definitely don't delay having conversations with elders.
[01:19:20] Speaker C: And even young people, because we don't know how much time we have, just try to start having conversations and getting a good list of questions that you want answered and just ask them over.
[01:19:31] Speaker B: And over again and be kind of pesty about it.
[01:19:33] Speaker C: That's okay, because it will firstly for older people and really for me, too, it takes a while for you to.
[01:19:40] Speaker B: Like, sometimes you'll have a question, you'll.
[01:19:42] Speaker C: Dream about it, and then you'll be.
[01:19:44] Speaker B: Like, oh, I remember now what happened.
[01:19:48] Speaker C: And things you repress, especially stuff that's painful.
[01:19:51] Speaker B: You will repress the memories unless you were journaling real time when those things were happening.
[01:19:59] Speaker C: And then I did have that because some of the stuff that I wrote, I was like, some journals I hadn't.
[01:20:03] Speaker B: Read in 20 years that I had.
[01:20:06] Speaker C: To go back through page by page. They were just, like, in a box, and I had to crack them open. It was like, it was hard sometimes to write some of those.
[01:20:20] Speaker A: And so what about the research part of finding out from people who have passed that you don't even know about, right. The going through the latter day saints, I'm not sure if anyone would even think of going through those records.
[01:20:41] Speaker C: My experience with ancestry was up and down. It was not a linear process by any means.
[01:20:49] Speaker B: It was times that I may start on a Friday night, and it could.
[01:20:54] Speaker C: Be Sunday morning, and I'm still sitting.
[01:20:55] Speaker B: In my computer trying to figure out.
[01:20:59] Speaker C: I'm looking at all these records, and.
[01:21:02] Speaker B: I'm like, you've got a hint.
[01:21:03] Speaker C: Then you got to kind of be like, is this the right person?
But then in those conversations with elders, I would have all these notes of.
[01:21:12] Speaker B: Like, such and such.
[01:21:13] Speaker C: Grandfather was named blah, blah, blah, and they lived here. And you just have all these. It just feels like random names and birth dates.
[01:21:22] Speaker B: But if you can get names, approximate birth dates in places where they were.
[01:21:29] Speaker C: And try to work through census records, which are like a wealth. Census records are, like, the business.
When people be like, when census come around, I'd be like, make sure your family does the census. That's so important.
[01:21:44] Speaker B: And being able to put together where.
[01:21:46] Speaker C: People were, birth dates.
[01:21:50] Speaker B: And it was never, like, linear.
[01:21:52] Speaker C: Some days I would find the families or the mothers and the fathers, and other times I wouldn't.
[01:21:58] Speaker B: So you'd have, like, a hole. You have these people. You have a hole.
[01:22:02] Speaker C: Do you have these people? And you just have to just keep going until it was like, putting a puzzle together.
And so at times, my ancestry would expire, and I'd be like, I'm so tired of ancestry. And then I would subscribe again.
Let me go back in here because I would find out one little piece of information, then I put it in.
[01:22:24] Speaker B: And I'm like, jackpot.
[01:22:28] Speaker C: And then I'd find more stuff. And then when I had my mother do the ancestry test, that's when I found out about the bio, the real biological family. And then I wind up having conversations with them. I got pictures and I was like, oh, my goodness, like, ma, that's your half sister.
[01:22:48] Speaker B: For real?
[01:22:48] Speaker C: For real.
You think you look like people, then you find these other people. You're like, oh, that's who I look like.
[01:22:56] Speaker B: So it's definitely a journey. Latter day Saints was an interesting one.
[01:23:02] Speaker C: Somebody just told me that, you know, has like, this deep database, but I could never get past their website.
So I wind up contacting the Latter day Saints and I'm like, which is.
[01:23:14] Speaker B: Like, I'm like, can I get access to your database? And so then I became, like, them.
[01:23:21] Speaker C: Calling me all the time and like, oh, can we get together? I'm like, no, we got to do this virtual because it's like still during the pandemic. And then I found and they told me, as soon as I got on the phone with them, they told me the little workaround to get access.
[01:23:34] Speaker B: I was like, that's it.
[01:23:35] Speaker C: I could have been and said no to that question or whatever. So I get in and they're showing me how to put stuff in and it's very simplistic kind of database.
[01:23:46] Speaker B: But then once I got names out.
[01:23:49] Speaker C: Of it, then I put those back in ancestry and that was like, I started getting all of this documents and.
[01:23:57] Speaker B: I'm like these white people and letters.
[01:23:59] Speaker C: And pictures and I'm like, oh, my, this is like, towards the end of, like, this is the December, like November, December 2021, not published in January 2022. So I'm like, okay, this is a whole rabbit hole.
[01:24:11] Speaker B: I just had to cut it off because I was going down a rabbit hole again.
But it's a process.
[01:24:19] Speaker C: I would say, don't give up. I mean, there is, ancestry actually does have consulting services where you can hire a genealogist. And I was going to do that and then I kept getting little hints.
[01:24:29] Speaker B: And then I kept having little successes.
[01:24:32] Speaker C: I did have a call with them, like an intro call, and they gave me some really good tips and so.
[01:24:39] Speaker B: I had the money to pay them.
[01:24:41] Speaker C: So I was like, I'm going to have to just figure this out myself. And so they helped me out a little bit, but I could have hired somebody for a couple of $1,000 who.
[01:24:48] Speaker B: Would have just done, probably figured out more stuff.
[01:24:52] Speaker C: I always watched skip gates program, which I still watch every Sunday. And that would inspire me. Like, every time I would give up on ancestry, I'd be like, okay, let me start again.
[01:25:02] Speaker B: Let me try again. Let me put in a know.
[01:25:06] Speaker C: Just even changing the way names are spelled, like the Scafe family was spelled three or four different ways, learning that Green was a lot of times with an e, without an e, and just the way you spell things could change.
[01:25:21] Speaker B: The results that you would get.
[01:25:23] Speaker C: But it's a lot of sifting through a lot of information. And then I bought a lot of books. That's just my own skill of writing, of being able to read something, and I would just have all these things highlighted and how I will weave that into the overall story. But I was also inspired a lot by Isabella Wilkerson and her writing style. She wrote cast, she wrote Warrenth of other Sons, which is an incredible african american migration story. My editors actually recommended her and recommended a bunch of other books that I was reading as I was writing. And the way that they use certain syntax and all of that stuff, that was stuff that my editors helped me with. I listened to a lot of audiobooks.
[01:26:09] Speaker B: And stuff like that because warmth of.
[01:26:11] Speaker C: Other Sons is a super thick, like 750 page, 1415 hours audiobook, but just so beautiful.
[01:26:21] Speaker B: And now cast, the movie origin is out now.
[01:26:26] Speaker C: Ava Duvernay directed, which is about Isabella Wilkerson's writing of cast, which I ran out and saw even before it came out. Like, I saw it, like two days before it came out in regular release because I just love her writing style. It takes a long time for her.
[01:26:46] Speaker B: To write those books, but I love.
[01:26:49] Speaker C: Her context and how she uses history and tells these really compelling stories.
So read while you're writing.
[01:26:58] Speaker B: That's my tip.
[01:27:00] Speaker C: Make a lot read while you're writing because it can give you a lot of examples of how to pull things together.
[01:27:08] Speaker A: So where can people purchase your book and support any future offerings that you have? And even you sell bee pies as well. So where can people go to get that?
[01:27:21] Speaker C: The book is available through Amazon Barnes. And, you know, you can just buy the book there if you're in, you know, hit me up on thebeanpie.com, hit me up on Instagram. Miss Tiffany Green or the Bean pie book because I always have books with me and I like, know sell them personally to people because then I can sign them if anybody wants bean pies you can order
[email protected]. I make them to order.
[01:27:49] Speaker B: I don't really ship because I'm still.
[01:27:51] Speaker C: Making them from home. I don't bend as much because it's just a lot of work.
But if people, I get orders for bean pies all the time and it takes me a couple of days, maybe two days at the most to make them fresh and connect with the people and get them to so. Thebeanpie.com Miss Tiffany Green on Instagram the Beanpie book on Instagram is the best.
[01:28:18] Speaker B: Ways to get in touch with me.
[01:28:20] Speaker A: Tiffany, I really, really appreciate you being a guest today and really opening up about many of the things and topics within the book so that people could really hear it from you. And although there's a wealth of information in there related to each woman listed in the book, it's always great to.
[01:28:44] Speaker B: Hear it from the author.
[01:28:46] Speaker A: So I want to thank you for being here today.
[01:28:49] Speaker C: Thank you so much. I'm glad to have this conversation and honored to be on Sapphilo Square.
Thank you.
[01:28:57] Speaker A: And thank you all for tuning in to this episode of on the Square real talk on race and Islam in the Americas, a special podcast series brought to you by Sapphilo Square and the maiden. Thanks to our guest, Tiffany Green Abdullah. You can find information about what we discussed, including links and more by visiting podcast. Our theme music is provided by Fanatic on Beat.
