What’s possible when we collectively embrace the wisdom revealed by apocalypse?
Around the Table: Unearthing Apocalypse with Lucecita Cruz and Norma Wong in conversation with Yana Gilbuena-Babu
Our Around The Table series features informal conversations between food workers, thought leaders, elders, organizers, and creatives about emergent insights in food culture. Together, we sink our teeth into the juicy stories, live questions, and critical conversations buzzing in food and culture spaces.
Poster Art by: Lizzie Suarez
Photo ID: Illustration of flower growing in dark area with a soft light emanating from the background. The root system and is visible in cross section, and ghostly outlines of the flower's lifecycle flow around the plant. Overlaid text reads, "Around the Table Unearthing Apocalypse woth Lucecita Cruz and Norma Wong. Hosted by Yana Gilbuena-Babu Tuesday July 18, 12pm PT/3pm ET. foodculture.org." Food Culture Collective logo is set in the lower righthand corner of image.
What transformative pathways emerge when we unearth the wisdom revealed by apocalypse? The Latin root of Apocalypse means, “to reveal; to uncover.” Usually, this is interpreted to mean something dreadful is revealed. But what if what's revealed is our inherent wholeness, mutuality, generosity and connection? How might we unearth practices to compost empire and seed more liberatory, thriving futures?
These were some of the questions that Food Culture Collective’s Advisory Council Member, ancestrally-taught chef, writer, and death doula, Yana Gilbuena Babu, brought to the table on July 18th, with Boricuir food justice organizer, writer, farmer and co-founder of Cuir Kitchen Brigade, Lucecita Cruz, and Native Hawaiian Zen Priest and movement strategist, Norma Wong.
They were joined by over 55 guests around the virtual table for an invigorating conversation drawing on Lucecita Cruz’s and Norma Wong’s respective lineages of Queer ecology and Zen practice to highlight the wisdom of their communities and these distinct approaches to reweaving care for the lands, waters and peoples who nourish us in moments of crisis, for generations to come.
From interrogating the surviving vs. thriving dialectic, and questioning mainstream culture’s individualistic framework around transformation, to rethinking who we actually mean when we think of “community”—together they dug into what is possible when we listen to the wisdom revealed by apocalypse.
Full recording of the Around the Table: Unearthing Apocalypse conversation from July 18, 2023
What follows are some highlights from this energetic conversation, as well as some thought-weaving. You can read and listen through the whole piece, or pick and choose based on the questions you’re most drawn to. This was a rich hour-long conversation and we encourage you to tune in to the entirety by watching the video embedded above.
Some quotes have been edited for length and clarity. To view the full transcript of the conversation with Lucecita, Norma, and Yana, click here. All graphic recording illustrations are by Sara Yukimoto-Saltman.
Setting the Virtual Table: What food would you bring if we were all at the same actual table?
Food Culture Collective has a tradition of inviting the guests in conversation to set the table as a way of grounding in the moment together with intention. Norma, Lucecita (Luz), and Yana contemplated what food they would each bring to share if we were all congregated around the same physical communal table.
Image ID: Overhead photo of two bowls Pigeon Peas with Green Banana Dumpling Stew on a table.
PHOTO BY MJ KROEGER. Food52. Recipe by Luz Cruz, “Gandules con Bollos Guisado (Pigeon Peas with Green Banana Dumpling Stew).”
Luz Cruz: I would bring this dish I’m really obsessed with—gandules con bollos. It's a green pigeon pea stew that has green banana dumplings in it. So you grate green bananas, and form balls with that, and then you drop them into this stew when it's boiling. It is something that my father cooks for me every time I come visit him in New York City in his home. It's a thread between myself and my ancestor and I feel that every time I eat it.
Norma Wong: Knowing that Lucecita might bring this, I think I would need to bring some crispy rice. And mix it with some herbs and perhaps a little of the Chinese sausage…oh, that would have been crispy! Cooked separately, so that the taste would be totally in the sausage and bring that to serve with your stew.
Yana Gilbuena-Babu: I am really loving this menu. And it's making me hungry because it's lunchtime. I think I would probably bring some greens to your table. Just so we can balance. We need that fiber!
What comes up for you and in your practice with the word “apocalypse”?
There is no dearth of stories, images, and ideas in mainstream culture about apocalypse. From climate doomerism, to AI takeover and the looming threats of war and violence—much of our collective imagination around apocalypse is focused purely on destruction. But what comes after that? What can be revealed through these cycles of undoing? What if we viewed apocalypse as a part of an ongoing process of composting and rebirth?
Yana asks the guests to reflect and share about how apocalypse shows up in their work and lives. Luz reflects on the embodied experiences of living through our present-day apocalypse and navigating the grief that accompanies that. Norma grounds in the question, “which part of our humanity will we rise to?”
Luz Cruz: Today I was driving with the windows down, and I was wearing a mask in the car because of all the smoke. My partner turned to me and said, “This is so unsettling…I just need to get used to this being the way that it's going to be.” And I turned and said, “I don't want to get used to this. I don't want this to be my new normal.”
And it's hard to describe the feeling of living in the world right now—we're living in this moment where this climate apocalypse is happening. It almost feels like the walls are closing in on us. It hurts to breathe. I also like to think of the mutual aid that I see happening…particularly in Minneapolis around food, the mutual aid that I see happening in Puerto Rico around seeds and food and the protection and protests, for the protection of our beaches and Native lands. There are still people fighting for this not to be our normal.Yana Gilbuena-Babu: How do you mitigate those feelings of not wanting this to be normal, but also, sensing the despair?
Luz Cruz: I pray a lot and I sing a lot. I think of people who came before us and people who are coming after us. And I have hope and faith in my comrades—in the people who are doing the work—that’s crucial for me to even continue doing this work.
Norma Wong: This particular moment that's happening with Mother Earth is making itself known—unveiling itself—which is a large part of what apocalypse is. It is an unearthing of the unearthing. We need to answer the call—hopefully not so much as individuals—but as collective humanity.
The difficulty of the times might make people collapse into their own shell, and to try to just save themselves—to hoard and to steal and to do those kinds of things. And we see those things happening around us at the same time as the beautifulness of people coming together to be a family with each other, whether they're related or not. It's a time when we need to really choose, right? Which part of our humanity will we rise to?
These are things that I might think about on occasion, but mostly what I'm thinking about is my next meal. “What would I make that will be both delicious and also use what I have?” These days I have found the preparation of food to be very important…“If this is to be my only meal, may I take care in making it?”
What practices and principles do you use to prepare for the apocalypse and its aftermath?
Calling in Norma and Luz’s respective lineages in Zen practice and queer ecologies, Yana asked them to share how their practices and principles help guide the way they navigate apocalypse in their work and lives.
Norma reflected on the importance of actually living into our values, and Luz invites us to explore how we can find ways to nourish ourselves and lean into our relationships with the land.
Norma Wong: Our ancient peoples would have lived whatever values it is that they believed in, rather than just believing in their value, whatever the principles are. I think that in modern times, there is a greater tendency to separate our values and principles from our daily practices. To bring those back together again, feels like a really important thing for us to do, if we're to be able to come back to our original nature.
It feels like a paradox worth stepping into. As everything feels like it's going to collapse or move in on us, we can come back to our original nature. And we practice bringing Earth back to its original nature too. Really practice that.
We don't take more water than we need. We share the water. We keep the water clean. We not only believe that water is life, but we practice every day as if we not only do depend on that, but we will return life to water. And, to have our practices and our values of principles be one in the same—in the simplest ways possible. This feels extraordinarily important right now.
Graphic recording illustration by Sara Yukimoto-Saltman. Image ID: Illustration of Norma Wong with handwritten text overlaid that reads, “I think that in modern times there is a greater tendency to separate our values from our daily practices. And to bring those things back together feels like a really important thing for us to do. -Norma Wong”
Luz Cruz: I believe that we have all of the tools that we need in order to survive this. How do we prepare for the apocalypse? I think we need to start with the apocalypse within “myself.”
We need to start with the unearthing of these practices and then unearthing of these methods of survival that have existed well beyond us. Whether it's surviving colonization, and the persecution of your oppressors or surviving homophobia and racism and various state structural oppressions that exist. Or if it's surviving with the land and learning how to create sustenance for ourselves with it, and learning how to nurture it as well, and have this symbiotic relationship. I think it starts with us first.
Luz Cruz: For me, it's like this song called “Drop of Water,” by Dana Lyons, who is a big environmentalist.
“Go for the wildness in my soul
and for once life, for once in life, I know I'm not alone
For the mountains make our bones and the oceans and our blood and our feet planted,
planted firmly in the mud.”
What is possible when we all collectively unearth apocalypse individually and in community?
Recognizing the power of action in community, Yana asks Luz and Norma to dream into the possibilities when we work together to move through apocalypse.
Norma shares thoughts on how transformation requires more than the individual scope, and the importance of coming back to our inherent worthiness and ancestral wisdom. Luz challenges the hyper-capitalistic answers to the question “who gets to survive the apocalypse,” and points to how surviving and thriving are not on a linear trajectory—that they can coexist in the same spaces.
Graphic recording illustration by Sara Yukimoto-Saltman. Image ID: Illustration of landscape in recovery with root systems and vines and fog connecting all the beings. Overlaid speech bubbles read, “And for the “we” to include other human beings, the rocks, and the trees”… “For the “we” to be as big as possible...”… “I think a lot about what people mean by community.”
Norma Wong: I'm cognizant of the ways in which the cultures of places may make us more aligned to common ground or more towards individuality. And I think of individuality as not being a great thing, with respect to the march of civilization.
This notion of the striving that you might do as an individual—in any kind of transformative work—it is work that you have to do yourself. It cannot be done by others. But what do you do that for? Do you do that for your own comfort? For your own well-being? Do you seek your comfort in exclusion of another person? If you're going to train hard and practice hard, towards what end?How you answer that question–whether you say it's for me or if you'd say it's for us, and who you define as us—makes a really big difference.
So, this is part of, “towards what end and for whom?” For the “we” to be as big as possible. And for the “we” to include other beings other than humans. To expand that awareness. Especially in a time of collapse. To really question, when we say the words “common cause” or “common ground,” or “common good”... How wide and broad and specific are we about that? I think it really matters. It really matters. A lot of what is being litigated these days—that makes collapse much more violent—is the way in which we tend to try to save ourselves when things collapse.
I would say, look to the strength of our people. And look to the strength of the gifts of our people, to the wisdom of our people. And if we are strong and we are wise, and we are worthy of this moment, then we have gifts to bring to other people as well.
Luz Cruz: I'm curious as to how you define whether or not we're worthy, and where it is that coming from?
Graphic recording illustration by Sara Yukimoto-Saltman. Image ID: Illustration of landscape in recovery with root systems and vines and fog connecting all the beings. Text overlaid reads, “Who gets to survive the apocalypse?”, “A lot of what makes collapse much more violent is the way we tend to try to save ourselves when things collapse; and when we say' ‘oirselves,’ we get smaller and smaller in how we define that.”, “The apocalypse is now. We experience the unearthing everyday.”, “Apocalypse: To unearth, uncover.”
Norma Wong: The miracle of being a human is that when you are born, you are entirely whole and and perfect, right? And then there is this way in which the world can feel like a conspiracy to remind you that you are not…you may get to a place where you are totally unworthy, even to yourself.
And I think of healing in this way: Although we must support each other—and that support is fiercely required—all transformation, that part that heals the spirit of who it is we are, is within us when we are born. And to uncover that part and to come and connect with that again—even if there is all kinds of other healing yet to be done—that is the place of worthiness.
Luz Cruz: So often when we talk about preparing our “communities” for climate change, we talk about worthiness in the context of a hyper-capitalistic idealization of, “what physical thing can this person contribute to our community that makes them worthy?” and therefore deems them someone who should survive the apocalypse.We're not talking about, like, my brother who is in prison right now, you know? We're not talking about, like, the millions and millions of bodies that are incarcerated, whether it is in the US prison system or ICE detention centers. We're not talking about especially in communities of color and BIPOC communities, we're not talking about lower class poor white people. We're not talking about people that, like, exist in these marginalized categories but don't—under a hyper-capitalistic lens— necessarily have anything to “contribute” to our study in our communities.
I was more curious about diving into the worthiness aspect of, “Who becomes a part of our communities? Who, who gets to survive this?” Because to the, you know, to the 1%, we don't get to survive this. We don't deserve to survive this, right? And if we do, it's silly to contribute to having our labor and our lives exploited so that they can live comfortably in this apocalyptic world.I think a lot about our communities. I think a lot about what people mean by “community” and the ways in which communities can be interrupted by our traumas. And the fact that healing is just not linear.
Norma Wong: By definition, all of us who are here right now, are the people who have survived…But if we are just looking at survival, not thriving, anyone on this call who was a farmer would know what a piss-ass garden that would be. The greens are bitter, not because they're intended to be, everything chewed up by the snails and the slugs and the flies…okay, so we survived.
To move towards thriving—the abundance of having more mango come from your tree than you can eat and now you must share—that would be that level of thriving that we work towards.The health of our people is something that is going to have to occur because we work on it on a community basis, right? The nature of health requires there to be both practitioners and places and medicines and you know, a combination of modernity as well as whatever we have brought forward from our grandmother's grandmother. And if you look at healthcare, I refuse to think about what we should seek in healthcare as just having our people survive.
Luz Cruz: I feel like it's a both/and for me though, and I say this as an individual who is diabetic and literally cannot live without insulin. Access to more insulin would be great and would contribute to my thriving. Access to land would also contribute to my thriving. Land that is healthy. I think we've come to a point where there is no going back—we don’t necessarily go forward in a way that lifts up the medical and industrial complex—but do create access for people who, at this point in our history, literally cannot live and survive without these things.
I also think about thriving and survival…there isn't a linear trajectory for either of those things. I don't think that first we achieve survival and then we reach thriving. I think that they can exist in the same space with each other.
Closing thoughts and offerings
Food Culture Collective has a tradition of inverting the traditional Q & A and instead offering the guests in conversation to leave the folx listening in with a closing thought, question, or offering to ponder afterwards. Norma offers up a reflection on the waters that nourish us and how we can carry that forward. Luz leaves us by inviting us into a practice of building inclusive community so we can build a world where we’re all thriving.
Graphic recording illustration by Sara Yukimoto-Saltman. Image ID: Illustration of Lucecita Cruz with overlaid text that reads, “Create a practice of thinking about who your community is, and who you are leaving behind. And figure out how to shift your praxis so those people are included—so that everybody is thriving and surviving. —Lucecita Cruz”
Norma Wong: These days, mostly, I sit with water to not take the water for granted. To drink it with gratitude. To not waste it. To do what I can to return water, to give water, to not hold water back from that which needs water. Which is also the water that is within me as a human. I, like many others, are mostly made of water, to allow my tears to be nourishing to me. Not to bring about embitterment, but to just return water. To remember how much of who it is that I am and that we are. To be this.
So, you know, a question that I would leave for people is:
“In the water that you drink, what is it that you would cultivate with that water? And in taking that water, what would you leave behind to not carry that burden with you?
This time of apocalypse gives us that opportunity to not have to carry everything forward. But to, with care, leave something behind.
Lucecita Cruz: I wanna ask people to create a practice of knowing who is in your community, and thinking about who you're leaving behind. Who is not included in that? And then figuring out how to shift and change your praxis so that those people are also included.
It's been said over and over and over again—but our collective liberation is built on the liberation of each other. For me, it's about figuring out who you're leaving behind in your apocalypse, and learning how to incorporate them into your community so that everyone is thriving and surviving.
There are so many more juicy tidbits to pull out from this empowering conversation, and so many more threads to follow. To watch the full Around The Table conversation, tune into this video. You can also find the full transcript here.
We have so much gratitude for Lucecita, Norma, and Yana—for the gifts of their time, openness to digging deep and sharing, and their invitations into action. To keep up with their work, be sure to follow them on social media at @plantita_luz and @saloseries. And be sure to subscribe to the Food Culture Collective newsletter to keep up with the latest happenings, offerings, and community invitations.
About the guests & facilitator
Photo by Lucecita Cruz. Image ID: Headshot of Lucecita Cruz with text on right side of image that reads, “ Food Culture Collective Around the Table: Unearthing Apocalypse with Lucecita Cruz, Boricuir Food Justice Organizer, Writer & Farmer.”
Lucecita Cruz is a Queer Anarchist Afro-Latinx farmer, herbalist, organizer and Land justice advocate from the Puerto Rican Diaspora that lives in Minneapolis.
They are fighting to protect front line communities who are affected by food injustice and climate change. They have organized with inter-generational BIPOC Queer and Trans folks around gender, race and food. Lucecita organizes in a way that combines art, food and activism to better understand our current conditions and develop ways to help fix them.
They believe in the liberation of Puerto Rico and of all peoples from their oppressors.
Twitter/X:@Luz_Cruz3
Instagram: @Plantita_Luz
Photo by Na'alehu Anthony. Image ID: Headshot of Norma Wong with text on right side of image that reads, “ Food Culture Collective Around the Table: Unearthing Apocalypse with Norma Wong, Native Hawaiian Zen Priest & Movement Strategist.”
Norma Wong (Norma Ryuko Kawelokū Wong Roshi) is a teacher and thought partner. She is the abbot of Anko-in, an independent branch temple of Chozen-ji. She serves practice communities in Hawai‘i, across the U.S., and in Toronto, Canada.
Among her areas of teaching: waging peace; leadership and strategy in the 7 generations context. Wong served as a state legislator, on the policy and strategy team for Governor John Waihee, and community organizing and policy work in the Native Hawaiian (indigenous) community.
She is a Native Hawaiian and Hakka who lives in Kalihi Valley on the island of O`ahu in the Hawai`i archipelago.
Image ID: Headshot of Yana Gilbuena-Babu with text on right side of image that reads, “ Food Culture Collective Around the Table: Unearthing Apocalypse with Yana Gilbuena-Babu, Ancestrally-Taught Chef, Writer & Death Doula”
Yana Gilbuena, a Philippine-born, critically acclaimed ancestrally-taught chef, started SALO Series to share with the world the vibrant food culture of the Philippines. The Salo Series hosts Filipino Kamayan dinners, wherein food is served on communal tables decked with banana leaves, and guests are encouraged to eat with their hands, in pre-colonial tradition. In her American tour, Yana hosted pop-up dinners in 50 states in 50 weeks, as well as across Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Australia, Europe and her home country, Philippines. She is a 2017 Stone Barns Exchange Fellow and has also been featured in major publications such as The New York Times, SF Chronicle and National Geographic. She's been published in The Cherry Bombe Cookbook, Feed the Resistance and has self-published her own: No Forks Given of March 2019. This global culinary nomad aims to further her mission and aims to host a Salo on every continent.
Instagram: @saloseries
Art from the Transform the Now comic series, illustrated by Anjali Kamat.
Transforming culture is directly tied to food and climate justice.
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