Member-only story
Should I Eat Watermelon in Front of White People?
The hassle of navigating an ugly stereotype
My grandma Kathryn lived in the same house from the time she married my grandpa at 19 to the day she died at 80. Every summer, my parents packed me and my sisters into the family van and drove us to that little house in the center of Louisiana for a few weeks. Not only did we see my grandma, but a galaxy of aunts, uncles, cousins, and kin who also looked to her as our esteemed matriarch.
Summer in the Deep South is not simply hot, it’s also oppressively humid. Stepping outside to walk to the corner store felt like stepping into a sauna. By the time my sisters and I walked the block and half up the road and back, we’d be soaked in sweat. My grandma’s house, built so long ago, held the kitchen in the middle of the home, so once the stove was on, the whole house shot up ten degrees. On those hot, humid afternoons, we learned to eat watermelon.
One of my earliest memories of eating watermelon is standing in the kitchen with my grandma over a bowl of freshly cut fruit as she sprinkled it with salt. “A little salt,” she told me, “makes it taste even sweeter. Here, try.” As I bit down on a square of sweet, pulpy pink fruit, tiny salt crystals exploded through my mouth and I was hooked.
