Minneapolis – Feeding Our Souls the Essence of Unity

Feeding Our Souls the Essence of Unity explores the themes of connecting and joy through food and community. Our host and feature partner is BIPOC Foodways Alliance (BFA) – a nonprofit organization that seeks to break down barriers between cultural communities using food as a tool. Through its program Immigrant Kitchen, BFA provides a platform for women of color and women of lived immigration and refugee experience to tell their stories through the lens of home cooking. They seek to uplift, share, and archive important cultural legacy stories and histories that mainstream food media may have a tendency to overlook or ignore. The evening’s host is Mecca Bos, Founder of BIPOC Foodways Alliance. Featured “home cook” chefs are Vivian Mims, Phonn Sann, Safa Abualreesh, and Christina Arias Acosta.

Mecca Bos is a Culinary Storyteller who has been working as a food writer and chef for more than 20 years. She worked as a staff writer for Insight News, food editor of the former publications Metro Magazine and City Pages, and has written for many local and national publications including Taste, Civil Eats, and The New York Times. She is a regular contributor to Minnesota Public Radio and is about to embark on a book that will be published by the University of Minnesota Press, Finding Our Tribe, exploring the biracial experience in America through the lens of food. She has worked as a chef, sous chef, and cook in many professional kitchens from casual to fine, including dinners at Platform by the James Beard Foundation in New York City. 

Vivian Mims is a lifelong Rondo Community resident who learned to cook from her 94-year-old matriarch Juanell Mims. Vivian remembers extended, fried chicken dinners served by her mother every single Sunday. Vivian picked up the family tradition from her mother and is a skilled Soul Food cook. Vivian and her brother Davvie are currently working on a sprawling teleplay script that follows the trajectory of their family since they arrived in St. Paul during The Great Migration.

Phonn Sann is a Cambodian refugee who survived starvation in Thai Refugee camps during Cambodia’s devastating and brutal Civil War. She and her husband, Soreth Phann, were forced into an arranged marriage in that camp, and went on to have a large family who feel their family’s love through her mother’s cooking prowess. Phonn cooks Cambodian cuisine like a pro and keeps her family connected to their culture through this practice.

Safa Abulareesh moved to Minneapolis more than 30 years ago to join her husband who had business here. Like many Palestinians, she was born in Jordan after her grandparents were forced out of their home in Palestine during the 1948 “Nakba,” the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during and after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Like many of those Palestinians, Safa is still deeply rooted to her culture and cooks her traditional food as both a way to stay tethered to that culture, as well as an act of resistance.

Christina Arias Acosta is from Mexico City and was Sean Sherman’s first hire at the Indigenous Food Lab in Minneapolis. She helps with everything, including making staff meals for the entire team. She learned to cook from her grandparents and plans to make a green mole that her grandmother learned from her grandmother. Sean says Christina is the “resident elder” at IFL. Christina’s daughter and granddaughter also work for the organization, carrying on the tradition of mothers learning to cook from their mothers.

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