Theories of Falling—as well as
Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life, a disability memoir and cultural history of food allergies
. She served as the editor for
Vinegar and Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. Honors for her work include the 2019 Munster Literature Centre’s John Montague International Poetry Fellowship, a 2015 NEA fellowship, and five DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities fellowships. She lives in Washington, D.C.
INTRODUCTION
I’ve been thinking about beans. Stay with me. My early appetite for them was functional: a can pulled off the shelf, preferably with a pull-tab top, and dumped into a microwaveable vessel. But in the past year, I’ve gotten pretty good at cooking dried beans. Black beans, limas, flageolet. That means making my own stock—onions, whole-clove garlic, chopped carrots and celery. Bay leaves make a difference. I bring to a boil, relax to a simmer, add cumin or hot sauce, and wait for that moment when a rigid, slightly gritty texture turns creamy and velvet.