Prompt 168. Ghost Bread
Angelique Stevens on symbolic firsts & a couple exciting announcements
Hi friend,
I’ve had terrible insomnia all week. I’ve been waking up long before the sun, tossing a bit before giving up the ghost of sleep. Usually I turn to a book—most recently George Saunders’s A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, which is just brilliant, like a mini-MFA in writing. But this morning, what I reached for was a catalogue of flowering bulbs. I’ve been working with my friend Sharon, who’s an artist and also a talented gardener, to choose some to plant in the beds around my house. I spent the pre-dawn hours searching the scientific names on Google, admiring their blossoms, imagining where they might bloom.
Working with Sharon has reminded me of my mother, who is also an artist and avid gardener, always tending beds full of daffodils and arbors covered with creeping vines. Last December, I bought my first house—an 1830s farmette in the Delaware Valley—and the learning curve has been steep. It has been fascinating to realize what I picked up about homeownership simply by watching my mom. (She’s incredibly handy and wields power tools like a pro.) But I find myself wishing I’d spent more time kneeling beside her in the flower beds, asking questions, offering to be her protégé.
Fortunately I have Sharon, and she and I will be planting in the next two weeks. I see something so romantic and poetic in the thought of burying bulbs, putting into motion a gift for my future self: a spring brightened by gem-colored tulips. I also see a richness and meaning in learning this new practice, connecting with my mother’s legacy, but with new friends, in this new place.
Here at the onset of Native American Heritage Month, we’re sharing a prompt from the writer and professor and my gorgeous, vibrant friend Angelique Stevens. It asks us to consider such symbolic firsts and the meanings they hold. May you uncover so much.
Sending love,
Suleika
P.S. We’ve scheduled our next meeting of the Hatch, our virtual writing hour—on Saturday, November 13 at 1pm ET. Carmen will be hosting and sharing some insights on the craft of writing. Paid subscribers will receive a Zoom link the day before!
P.P.S. Over the last few months, the Isolation Journals team has been busy designing and perfecting the journal we’ve always wanted, and it’s finally here! With a cover inspired by my dear mother’s paint palette, it has all our favorite details, like lay flat binding and nice thick pages so the ink doesn’t bleed. We’ll be launching a super limited batch of them later this week, available to paid subscribers first. Stay tuned!
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168. Ghost Bread by Angelique Stevens
One Saturday afternoon over 30 years ago, on a weekend visit, my father said, “Today is a good day for you to learn how to make ghost bread.”
My sister Gina and I were drinking coffee in his kitchen, and he took two big bowls from the cupboard and placed them in front of us, so we could each prepare our own batches of ghost bread—a type of Indian fry bread. He explained that the government gave Natives commodity foods like white flour, cheese, meats, and lard so they could live after being forced onto reservations. Then he scooped flour into our bowls. I was about to pour the water into mine when he snapped at me: “You’re doing it wrong.”
“I thought it was just bread,” Gina said. He told us curtly that it wasn’t just bread—that ghost bread is how we remember our ancestors, both the ones who died before us and those who are still connected to us.
This moment is part of a longer scene in my memoir-in-progress. I’ve been thinking lately about why it stuck with me for so long, why it was important for me to write about it. I tell my students that everything in their writing should bring with it some greater meaning: every word some greater depth, every character some greater representation, every object some greater symbolism. As writers, it’s our job to make sure our words do some heavy lifting.
On a very literal level, the bread represents sustenance—and since bread in varying forms is a staple food in most cultures, it’s universal. That we are making it by hand represents some degree of self-sustainability, that our father is teaching us represents a legacy, that we are doing it together represents community, that we are angry as we do it represents discord. On a much larger scale, the ghost bread represents the conditions our ancestors endured: colonialism and repression and forced assimilation.
In trying to figure out the symbolism of the bread, I could get to the heart of this moment. I could understand what was at stake: the loss of my father, but also on a much larger scale, the loss of culture.
There is so much here in this ghost bread.
Your prompt for the week:
Write about an important first—where someone taught you how to use or do something. It could be anything: a cooking lesson, fixing a flat tire, learning to drive, helping a cow give birth, taking the swim test, riding a bike over a rooted mountainside, cutting in paint on a wall, or kayaking on the river. When you’re finished, consider all the greater meanings embedded in that moment.
If you’d like, you can post your response in the comments below, in our Facebook group, or on Instagram by tagging @theisolationjournals.
Today’s Contributor
Angelique Stevens, Haudenosaunee, lives in Upstate New York where she teaches creative writing, literature of genocide, and race literatures. She holds an MFA from Bennington College and an MA from SUNY Brockport. She is writing a memoir that explores what happens when we cannot save the people we love the most and navigates the ways in which we are all inextricably rooted in both our cultural and biological ancestries. You can follow her on Twitter.
LOVE this. Brought up so many memories of all the many lesson my father taught me, too.