Mitochondria

On being over 3 million years old and giving power back to the people

Dinkinish O’Connor “When Braids Fly”

I recently visited someone I really respect in the natural wine space here in Miami. She invited me to visit a new Spanish spot where she manages the wine program.  This lovely Spanish restaurant is set in a gruesome scene that is the new Miami–poverty and privilege squeezed next to each other. The projects positioned next to the skeleton of an overpriced development hovering tall and wide, cranes cutting deep into the sky. The people who can afford a $18 glass of wine, mostly new Miami residents, slipping by the people who cannot afford to eat at most places south of 54th between Biscayne and Northwest 2nd. These new Miami residents, entitled and strange, slip by the old Miami folk, who built this city they’ve come to adore, the city they stroll through with designer dogs that graze concretes, smearing the sidewalk with hot shit, the rest of the world, ghosts, stuck in a new purgatory.   

“Hi. I’m Dinkinish,” I said to the young server Jasmine introduced me to. 

“Dink. It’s easier,” Jasmine said.   

It’s amazing how quickly you, too, can become a ghost. With just a quick phrase, I was gutted. Jasmine had no idea what she had done. The severing, chopping up of a name, skinning it, removing its flesh from bone, this sacred name of mine–din’ ki nesh or din’ ki nish, gifted to me not just by my beloved mother, the late Sonia Nunes O’Connor, but the ancestors. A name that made my official age 3.2 million years. 

A name, perhaps, I’ve been careless with. 

It wasn’t entirely Jasmine’s fault. This was how I had been presenting myself to the world:

“Hi. My name is Dinkinish, but feel free to call me Dink.”

“Hi. My name is Dinkinish, but you can call me Dink.”

By offering “Dink” as an alternative, I realize now that I was apologizing to people for having to pronounce my name. A side effect of the constant butchering–Dinkinish, the name I tried to hide as a little girl, preferring to tell people my name was Karen, my middle name, or Sade, an inner-cringing happening when people ran through the gamut of mispronunciations, giggling or grunting, moving through an array of dissonant sounds as the three syllable challenge strained through their voices:

-Dinkinish-AH (most popular)

-Dahlinkish

-Derilish

-Diminkish

-Drinkillish

-Donkinish  

So years ago, after an ex-boyfriend–a hot Jersey boy started calling me “Dink,” I decided that the world and I could settle on that name. Settle. But Dink is not my name. That weariness of having to correct and pronounce, correct and pronounce, correct and pronounce only to settle on what the world was more comfortable with was a mirror of a more profound weariness. Navigating the burden of otherness is exhausting. Racism is exhausting. Sexism is exhausting. Being an individual that has to explain and explain and explain is exhausting, and so, I surrendered some of myself, my creative self, my sacred self to what was easier, what demanded less explaining. Perhaps it was my Christian upbringing that told me that the burden was mine, that explaining my humanity was part of my identity, that I owed something to the person fumbling, innocently or intentionally, over the three syllables.

I thought it would be different in the food and wine space where wine professionals have to pronounce polysyllabic grapes, regions, and names all the time. When I first started studying wine, I remember practicing how to pronounce–gewürztraminer (ga-VERTZ-trah-mee-ner) over and over again. I was determined to pronounce it correctly. I respected my craft and the stories that preceded and followed the bottle. Pronouncing or attempting to pronounce a region correctly, particularly while I was in that region, was a sign of reverence. It’s showing love. 

When my brother was taking organic chemistry, he’d talk to me about the mitochondria the way I talked about this new grape I fell in love with, gewürztraminer. My brother, too, was in love, learning the human body and all its mysterious functions.The mitochondria is the cell’s moon, the main source of the cell’s energy.  It gives the cell power. If the mitochondria stops working, cells won’t produce enough energy, leading to cell damage and in extreme cases, death. 

From the moment we enter The United States school system, we learn which names to give power, to keep whole–Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Mikhail Nikolayevich Baryshnikov. In many English programs, we’re taught to fawn over the literary works of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Miguel de Cervantes, William Shakespeare, Ernest Hemingway. We memorize the names of Greek goddesses, Aphrodite and Persephone. At Christian schools, we learn those gargantuan biblical names–Nebuchadnezzar, Obidiah, Abednego.

We keep these names whole in our mouths. We dare not break them up. If you’re not of European descent, this begins the enculturation of your invaluable self. It begins with your name. We’re taught that names like Shanequa, Kiesha, Laquisha are ghetto. Not only are these names considered uncivilized but so are the people who hold them, even by some black folks. Occasionally, my name, Dinkinish, has fallen into the same pit– the sound, the weight, the texture, the energy, too cumbersome, too unpalatable, too difficult to make the effort to pronounce and ultimately consider.

Women like Hospitality Activist Ashtin Berry (@thecollectress) and Puerto Rican food columnist and cookbook author Illyanna Maisonet (@eatgordaeat) have reminded me how critical it is to be active in the changes I want to see in the world. As women of color, oftentimes, our consideration does not exist, so we must insist on it. We must insist on sharing the recipes of our people that are oftentimes not packaged and passed down in neat journals or hardcover books but at repasts near gravediggers and drunken relatives, after beatings and before sermons, in bible pages, in small kitchens with big mouths.  

“Look at my great-grandma, Emilia,” wrote Maisonet in an Instagram post. “Does this look like a woman that cares about you being comfortable? And so, this trait has been passed on to me. Born in a town that’s not too far from a sugar cane plantation, there’s some serious shit behind these eyes and gnarled hands. How I became a cook is not a romantic story...The women in my family learned to cook out of economic necessity. All of us…My story is not one that will make you comfortable. That’s not why I was put on this earth.”

Earlier this year, I was a part of a “Race, taste and wine” panel discussion with Alice Achayo and Miguel de Leon. Achayo is from East Africa, de Leon, from The Philippines. What a joy it was to be among other wine professionals of a color in a culture of insistence in regards to seeing wine lists in other languages and exploring wine terms in a way that is not “inclusive,” as that word can be so daunting and feel more like a mascot for trendy conversation as opposed to truth. We weren’t expanding the conversation around wine language. That idea gives power and comfort to the master narrative. We were speaking naturally about wine. We were giving power back to the most essential part of the industry: the people. 

In the wine world, people say, “Trockenbeerenauslese” (Tro-ken-bee-ren-ous-ley-zuh) so naturally. Trockenbeerenauslese is a very sweet dessert wine made in Germany from shriveled grapes. Their flavors are concentrated by a fungus, botrytis cinerea, or noble rot. Trockenbeerenauslese is often considered among the most luxurious sweet wines in the world.

Even as I write the words, “Trockenbeerenauslese is often considered among the most luxurious sweet wines in the world,” the question is, by whom? Toni Morrison and James Baldwin were among the storytellers who insisted on being part of that answer. We must continue to insist. If we don’t insist, we lose our power.

It’s difficult for me to share the origins of Dinkinesh’s name as I often question those old historians who have written history as they see it or the way they want it to be told, what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie calls the danger of the single narrative. But I will share this, Dinkinish’s remains were discovered in 1974 in Hadar, Ethiopia. She is 3.2 million years old. While I was attending Howard University, I met a group of Ethiopian students who explained that Dinkinesh’s discovery was evidence that humanity started in Africa. 

It was a lot to process, it still is. 

When she was discovered, Dinkinesh was given the name “Lucy” after The Beatles song, "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds." The name change also speaks to the presumption that the name needs civilizing, that it needs to be more accessible. Again, to whom? What it does is diminish and disempower. And so most people know this historical figure by the name, Lucy. But Dinkinesh’s life force extends beyond The National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa where she is kept, a place I hope to visit soon.

Dinkinesh is a small asteroid located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Not Lucy.