fbpx
Meet the Sisters Hosting and Producing Food Network’s Series on Kwanzaa!
by Ayana Iman
SHARE ARTICLE
LEFT TO READ

minutes

PUBLISHED ON

December 22, 2022

ARTICLE LENGTH

13 Minute Read

SHARE ARTICLE
CONTRIBUTOR

Meet the Sisters Hosting and Producing Food Network’s Series on Kwanzaa!

Kenya Parham joins her sister Tonya Hopkins in the kitchen for Food Network’s “The Kwanzaa Menu” (Courtesy of Food Network)

Kwanzaa: We’ve all heard about it. Perhaps even attended a celebration or know someone who has.

This week-long fete was created by Dr. Maulana Karenga in 1966 as a response to racial unrest. It is an opportunity for Black Americans to reaffirm their African roots and connect and uplift each other post-Christmas from December 26 to January 1. Each day of Kwanzaa is dedicated to one of the seven principles of African Heritage, as follows: 

  1. Umoja (Unity): To strive for and to maintain unity in the family and community.
  2. Kujichagulia (Self-determination): To define and name ourselves, as well as to create and speak for ourselves.
  3. Ujima (Collective work and responsibility): To build and maintain our community together and make our brothers’ and sisters’ problems our problems and solve them together.
  4. Ujamaa (Cooperative economics): To build and maintain our own stores, shops, and other businesses and to profit from them together.
  5. Nia (Purpose): To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
  6. Kuumba (Creativity): To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.
  7. Imani (Faith): To believe with all our hearts in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders, and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.

 
BlackLove.com Related Articles:
This Holiday Marketplace Centers Black Women — and We’re Here for It!
How My Husband and I Create Holiday Memories as an Interfaith Family
Black Love’s 2022 Holiday Gift Guide Presented By Mahogany

Although Kwanzaa was popularized during the Afrocentrist movement of the 1980s and 1990s, there is still so much to learn about this holiday.

I had an opportunity to speak to Tonya Hopkins, also known as “The Food Griot,” about the holiday and its traditions through food and conversation. She is a culinary historian, cook, drink designer, and now the host of the new series, “The Kwanzaa Menu,” premiering Monday, December 26th on FoodNetwork.com. In each of the seven episodes, Tonya and a special guest prepare a recipe that is connected to the day’s celebration. Together, they will commemorate each day of Kwanzaa by cooking meaningful dishes and discussing the history of this holiday. In the spirit of Umoja, which celebrates unity, Tonya is joined by her sister and show producer Kenya Parham, who will make a guest appearance on the show. 

As a foodie, I’m excited to see this show on Food Network, which is one of my favorite channels. How did the show come about?

Tonya (Hopkins): That’s a great question. The simple answer is the producer, owner, and director of Best Wishes Studio sent me a direct message on Instagram and was like: “Hi! I do these menu projects with Food Network and wondering if you might be interested in hosting a show.” I was like, sure. I knew I was their girl.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Tonya Hopkins (@thefoodgriot)

Your sister is a writer and producer on the show. Do you typically work with her on each project?

Tonya: Yes, we have collaborated on many things, including co-writing and so forth, but this would be the first time for an actual television (streaming) production, to my knowledge. We’ve written and co-produced for radio, but radio is not just radio anymore. It feels like TV because I must put on makeup and sit in front of the camera and smile and talk to guests. But, yes, she’s been instrumental in radio programming and events.

Got it. Speaking of production, I know everyone knows about Kwanzaa, but from my point of view, it’s not as celebrated as it should be. I’d love to hear your thoughts on why more Black people don’t celebrate the holiday.

Tonya: It’s something I’ve noticed, too. I think that there’s just a lot of apprehension, a lot of worry and concern, and I think some people think it’s religious and it’s not. Christianity plays such a big role in Black culture, but so does the Nation of Islam. And I think a lot of Christians think it’s a Nation of Islam holiday. A lot of people didn’t grow up celebrating it, except for my sister here who thought Santa was Black because we also had Black Santa on the tree. 

Kenya (Parham): Yeah. I think the biggest thing is that when we talk about culture – it is a system of morals and values. And whenever we talk about tradition and things that are celebrated, it is always offered in a format of things that are fixed.

 Kwanzaa was created with the intention of connecting us to a culture that was intentionally stripped from us. I think part of the reason we lean so heavily into this project is that we recognize that without continued education, we’re not just going to arrive at a place that allows us to readily identify what we’ve never known. There’s a disconnection from the culture that we know as Black Americans. right? Some people may feel like they desire to celebrate and want to know more. But because “I’m” conditioned to think that Kwanzaa is set, I don’t want to mess up; I don’t want to dishonor my culture; I don’t want to celebrate it wrong. This is part of why, again, we lean so heavily into this project. What we’ve grown to understand, not just through our own practice, but through research, is that Kwanzaa is really like a blueprint, and there’s a lot of adaptability and room for us to apply the practices in our lives.

And food is a great place to start.

Let’s talk about the food! What are the foods that are typically eaten on Kwanzaa?

Tonya: Well, there’s no simple answer to that. A core part of the Kwanzaa is creativity. On the sixth night of the holiday, December 31, the Karamu feast is held. As a community of people who have reinvented themselves and are known for being, arguably the most creative group of Americans, right, this is a perfect time to improvise and mix and match different cuisines.

You can choose dishes that were celebratory foods from our ancestors. For me, we have the strongest branches of our family tree in Maryland and in Virginia. One of our great-grandmothers is a descendant of the plantation cooks of the tobacco plantations there. You can look at Virginian cuisine and the influence that chef James Hemmings had on French cooking. That’s how mac and cheese went from being this high-end casserole dish on Thomas Jefferson’s table to becoming this ubiquitous, cherished, special occasion dish for Black Americans because we were the creators and stewards of that dish. 

Kenya: Of the things that make me the proudest about what my sister has been doing for years is that she takes her studies and shows that the food of the Black diaspora is much larger than slavery. And it goes beyond soul food that is native to the south. Right. We are trying to show that Kwanzaa has no rubric. While there is a blueprint of principles and intention to bring people together, there is no rubric for what you eat that day.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Tonya Hopkins (@thefoodgriot)

I understand your father, Dr. Thomas Parham (president of California State University, Dominguez Hills), will be a guest on the show. I would love to know more about the other guests that have in store. Are you able to share who they will be? 

Kenya: Absolutely, yes! We have some great people joining us. Taja V. Simpson, who is the star of BET’s “The Oval.” She’s making greens with Tonya in the kitchen. Then we’ve got the amazing Kareem Grimes, an actor on “SWAT” and “All American: Homecoming.” Culture writer extraordinaire Blue Telusma works with Jason Lee at Hollywood Unlocked. And then we have Chef Britney Sticks Williams, who is a chef of Caribbean descent.

And then we’ve got our dad closing out the series and we’re very excited. 

What do you want people to learn after watching this series?

Tonya: I intentionally chose fresh, naturally delicious nutritious ingredients for each of the recipes to remind us of the culinary brilliance our ancestors brought to this New World and served up in ways that have long contributed to vitality and longevity.

Celebrating Kwanzaa through good food and drink not only allows us to reconnect to the vibrance of our culinary history that greatly informs who we are as Black people, our very identities — but also to take pride in that which has so profoundly shaped American foodways at large, for centuries.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Bluecentric (@bluecentric)

Kenya: Both my and Tonya’s life work centers around doing all things “for the culture”! This project was a deeply personal labor of love — love for our people, love for ourselves, and love for the principles that anchor our lives. To collaborate on this production with my brilliant sister, our family, an all-star (majority Black) crew led by Best Wishes Studio and Food Network is the kind of kismet synergy dreams are made of! We know we’ve created a cultural gem with “The Kwanzaa Menu” and are tremendously excited for the world to receive it and celebrate with us! 

“The Kwanzaa Menu” will be available to watch on FoodNetwork.com. Follow Tonya Hopkins (@thefoodgriot) and Kenya Parham (@kenyatparham) on Instagram to learn more about their journey and future projects.  

JOIN THE CONVERSATION