BAKING AMERICA

A Presidential Address by Dr. Amma Y. Ghartey-Tagoe Kootin

Words & Performance by Dr. Amma

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

DR. AMMA

Hello America.

It is time for another heartspace chat,

with your president.

And, today, I want us to talk about:

baking.

I loooove to bake! 

I've been catching up on episodes of the Great. British. Baking. Show. 

And, I am like Oprah:

“I. 

love. 

Bread.” 

My father has a phenomenal bread recipe. 

His mother passed down the recipe to him when he was a child in Ghana, 

And, 

he passed down that recipe to me.

My dad's Ghana bread 

is the BEST. bread. you've never HAD!

It has a sweet, flaky crust surrounding a perfectly 

airy, textured bread center.

And when it is baking,

the spicy scent of it fills the whole house.

It’s so good!

But, for health reasons, I can’t eat wheat anymore. 

And, I’m trying to find a way to keep that bread in my life.

So, I have been trying to adapt my dad’s recipe.

with

gluten-free flours, 

sugar, yeast, and his mystery spice.

My baking attempts 

have been—

terrible. Yeah, bad.

It comes out like ROCKS.

Something is clearly wrong! 

I have been finding myself in my kitchen every week, 

in a ritual of baking.

Prepping pots and pans.

Ingredients.

Trying to perfect my dad’s bread recipe.

Real talk:

Like many of you who have been baking sourdough bread during this season,

baking, 

for me, 

has become one safe, therapeutic space--to

escape from 

and to reflect on

what our nation has been going through.

and...

In the wake of the news of Breonna Taylor,

I have been baking …

every …

day. 

STEP I: THE ORIGINAL RECIPE

When I’m baking--

mixing the dough, 

I 

often think about 

the original recipe 

given to our nation.

I reflect on the main ingredients we Americans love to quote so much:

• a dash of Liberty 

• a cup of life 

• a tablespoon of pursuit of happiness 

• a bakeable batter of “we the people”

I find it quite remarkable that

these favored ingredients made it into the American recipe to begin with

given that 

the founders of this nation were blinded to or compromised on some of those “self-evident truths” they professed, 

like 

“all men are created equal”

But at least these imperfect founders did a lot of heavy lifting in putting down on paper an original recipe for this nation.

They had the foresight to know that the recipe they were writing--

-- like all recipes --

was imperfect 

and could only be perfected by someone actually trying to bake it.

And today, 

we have 

one gift 

that the founders of the nation did not have:

WE 

have the gift of hindsight. 

When we look back at the truth of 

The recipe that we have baked.

The country in which we live.

The one that we call America, 

we must see that what we have created

leaves out our most favored and flavorful ingredients,

leaving us

with a half-baked, 

impostor 

of the original recipe. 

STEP II: WHAT WE’VE BAKED

I say this because the most vulnerable have voiced this reality to us across time and today. 

They have said: 

THE VULNERABLE

“America, you say we are the land of the free but why have you enslaved me?

“America, you say that everyone has a right to life, then why are you allowing someone to kill me?” 

“America, 

you say we have the right to pursue happiness, 

then why have you stolen my land? Why do we have unfair laws that favor some but not others?”

DR. AMMA

We 

are perpetually caught 

between the America that is 

and the America that can be. 

Our Lived Reality and Our Hope.

And, WE 

can't just hope that 

our country will come out better 

if we don't actually try to follow and perfect the original recipe. 

STEP III: AS AMERICAN AS…

We have to think of it like the recipe for apple pie. 

What ingredients 

would you expect to see on a recipe for Apple pie? 

At least 

flour, butter, sugar, green apples, cinnamon and other ingredients 

So, gow would you respond to somebody who shows up at your house and they say, 

SHADY NEIGHBOR

“Hey there neighbor. Have a slice of my homemade, apple pie.” 

You look down at their pie, but see:

• oranges, uncooked rice, coffee, and raw eggs all covered in white powder

You’re like: 

YOU

“This is not apple pie.” 

But, they say: 

SHADY NEIGHBOR

“Oh, this is as good as all-American apple pie.”

And you say:

YOU

“Oh nooooooooo…

I know apple pie. 

Where is the crust? Where are the apples? 

And—

what is that white stuff?”

And your neighbor smiles and responds earnestly:

SHADY NEIGHBOR

“This is apple pie.

And, that white stuff on top is 

powdered sugar 

and 

cyanide.”

America, real talk: 

Is the orange, rice, raw-egg, coffee-poisoned mess really apple pie? 

It is not. 

That's the country that we have been living in. 

We were given key ingredients for a recipe that we have yet to bake.

And, candidly, some of us—

--like our apple pie neighbor—

don't even want to include the core ingredients of the original recipe 

while others, 

have deliberately baked impostor poison pies whose fruits are to kill, steal, and destroy. 

The undoing of America is that it is undone 

whenever we won’t do WE the people.

STEP IV: (RE)MIX THE ORIGINAL RECIPE

And, this is what we’re about to do, America:

WE, the people, 

are going to start anew.

Next year, 

we will start baking our national recipe 

fully 

for the first time.

We will use our kitchens in our communities, neighborhoods, and cities as the sites of our own modern-day, constitutional convention ovens.

Everybody in the 50 states, D.C., and U.S. island territories around the world—

--from the youngest to the oldest—from citizens to immigrants on the way to our shores, will be in the room where it happens.

We will gather around the original recipe,

and begin a multi-year process

of testing and refining the ingredients and steps of baking our new nation. 

More details to come in the future.

Right now, I know some of you have been wondering:

Madame President,

“Are you asking us to start over from scratch?”

“I mean, surely, there are some edible parts of the impostor poison pie, right?” 

My fellow Americans, I ask all of us:

why would we want to eat a poison pie?

-- Listen--

I have learned from all of my bread-baking catastrophes— 

That when I throw out a bad batch to start a new one

I renew hope just by beginning again—

because I have the gifts of hindsight and wisdom I’ve learned 

to make a new, tastier bread.

So, when we gather next year: 

let us bring to the kitchen our favorite ingredients and ways of baking America that we’ve learned from our collective hindsight.

Real talk, we may find that what we’ve been calling our original recipe has been incomplete all along.

Because the voices of the vulnerable --

across time and in our own

will also be in the room with us,

as our accountability in our declarations of independence,

the Reframers of our Constitution;

and the reframers of our hearts.

This endeavor will be the real America’s Test Kitchen.

We need to do this 

so that 

we can make a more perfect bake of a country for everyone.

We have to. 

Because there is no CALVARY. 

No one else is coming to save the day for our nation. 

We are the ones who must finally bake 

that recipe 

of

these United States of America. 

AUDIO RECORDING CREDIT ATTRIBUTIONS

This audio recording "BAKING AMERICA: A Presidential Address by Dr. Amma” for the project: Artists in Presidents contains three royalty-free songs created by a third-party artist and licensed under the terms of a specific Creative Commons License. Usage of the following songs do not suggest that the licensor or composer endorses the artistic work, “Baking America: A Presidential Address by Dr. Amma”.

Plain Loafer by Kevin MacLeod 

Link: https://incompetech.filmm!u1s8i4c2.5io/song/4223-plain-loafer 

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 

Unnatural Situation by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4567-unnatural-situation 

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 

Clear Waters by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3516-clear-waters 

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 

Note: This song has been modified for usage in this audio recording.