168. Ghost Bread – 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.”
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.
