PRISM: The Call for Home
PRISM is a storytelling series amplifying the experiences, creativity, and imagination of Black, Brown, and Indigenous storytellers based in Kentucky.
by Persephanie Chiddick
The country of my origin celebrated her 42nd year of independence from Great Britain the same month that I turned 32, November 2023. I stood over my latest attempt at our national dish, Pepperpot, pondering what it meant to be born 10 years after my people gained their freedom.
Pepperpot is a popular dish in the West Indies, and several nations have their own iteration, a testament to their West African roots. The Antiguan Pepperpot is a mix of local produce that enslaved Black and Indigenous people found crucial to their sustenance. I experienced difficulty sourcing the ingredients in Louisville. The grief made my hands shake. I choked on homesickness in the parking lot of many grocery stores where okra was soft and speckled, and scotch bonnet pepper was seldomly stocked. How many of my enslaved ancestors struggled to find comfort in food that reminded them of their home, in the food they could find?
For their survival, my ancestors grew fiber and water-rich foods like choba (eggplant), cassava, pun’kin (pumpkin), spinach, okra, and green figs (bananas). Antigua is entirely enclosed by water, with the Caribbean Sea on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. The consistent presence of water is a harsh contrast to the regular droughts the island experiences. The absence of consumable water presents unique issues that impact the lives of Antiguans to this very day.
I made my stew too loose, despite following my grandma’s instructions, “Watch the amount of water. It is not to be watery like soup.” Her instruction was a reminder that enslaved Antiguans were forced to dig wells and ponds but were punished for drinking the collected freshwater. Pepperpot is a testament to their ingenuity around the lack of a natural resource.
As a child, home was a very definitive place: my extended family stretched wide on either side of my home, sugar cane grew wild in the backyard, and rainwater boiled in a tall pot on the back burner to make it safe for drinking. Home was the smell of bread freshly baked in the wood oven spreading over the village after dark, of the steady constant drone of crickets and crapaud (frogs), of waiting for the eye of the hurricane, and singing in the choir at open-air services. My elders seldom speak of slavery, preferring silence or a tale of triumph and progress. My people built a culture for themselves in the ruins of their oppression. They agreed on recipes and rituals, celebrations, societal norms, and expectations. My sense of home was built on the Black backs of the people who came before me, of survival after abandonment.
I began losing my sense of home the older I got. Antigua felt too small; the religious nature of the culture suffocated me. In 1995, Antigua & Barbuda passed the Sexual Offences Act, criminalizing homosexuality with a sentence of up to 15 years. Familial expectations of religious leadership clashed heavily with my attraction to women. My body grew, and a sense of being misplaced grew within me. My people were brought across great waters against their will and made a life for themselves, a truth; nevertheless, they moved freely. My mother told me stories of her parents moving their entire family to another island to fulfill their spiritual calling. Movement is in my blood, but my calling to travel was to find a place to belong, a place where I might feel accepted and safe.
I moved to Louisville, Kentucky, in 2018 from Charleston, SC, another place built quite obviously on slavery. My family migrated from Antigua to South Carolina for religious reasons, but the proximity to the residuals of slavery was distressing for me. Heavily influenced by the sea-faring Gullah Geechee community, the cadence of the Black Charlestonian is hauntingly similar to my West Indian dialect. The reminder of how so many of us wound up scattered across the diaspora was as tangible as the Spanish moss draping over ancient oak trees. I could not escape the romanticism of plantations or casual confederate flags in South Carolina. I could not live peaceably with frequent reminders that my people were livestock sold at popular tourist attractions like The Market, conveniently seated below the Daughters of the Confederacy museum. So I did what many Black people did before me and fled Charleston to head north in search of a place to call home.
How many of my ancestors experienced that shift: the acceptance that home as they knew it no longer existed? At first, I flourished in my new freedom. I moved a lot for the first few years of this new American life. In my wandering, I met people from cultures I hadn’t heard of, who in turn, knew nothing of Antigua. I tried foods made from ingredients I had not known existed, often impressed by how others kept themselves fed. My “hello” did not always lead to a “welcome back,” and new foods could not quell the craving for salt fish and fried dumplings. I still felt the pull of home. My home in Antigua could not be recreated in South Carolina, Kentucky, Florida, New Mexico, or any other place I’ve lived. At some point, I accepted that home is where you make it and settled into that knowledge the way I imagine formerly enslaved Africans settled in Antigua.
I have built a new home here in Louisville and found safety and security where I am. I established routines, followed inherited recipes, and acknowledged my yearning for a symphony of crickets and the crapaud before bed. I learned that okra and green figs are found at Indian grocery stores, and salted pork should not be bought from supermarket chains. I’m a nomad, a descendant of formerly enslaved people who still hears that call for home. My ancestors were brought over from West Africa with nothing but their knowledge, recipes, and resilience. I am proud to say that I have inherited the knowledge that home is where you make it. Like my ancestors, I answer the call one batch of Pepperpot at a time.
About the Author: Persephanie “seph” Chiddick was born in the United States but raised in Antigua, an island in the Caribbean. She received her Associate’s degree in English/Creative Writing from Valencia College and her Bachelor’s degree in Communications from Andrews University. She is a writer, podcast host/producer and a lover of paranormal romance. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky with her partner and two cats.
