A Conversation with Quianah Upton
The Atlanta-based chef and entrepreneur talks to me about land, memory, and her plans for a greenhouse cafe.
photo credit: Maggie Kane
I came across Quianah’s work online and was immediately entranced by her vision for a Black-owned, plant-powered greenhouse cafe in Atlanta. During our conversation, we kept circling back to spirit—the spirits of the land and of the plants we tend, the spirits that guide us through the everyday. I was reminded that creating spaces where Black people can be together in wellness and safety is always an act of magic, of bending time, of spirit-guided audacity. It was such a joy to talk to Quianah and hear how she’s alchemizing dreams of land stewardship into reality. I hope you enjoy.
AO: Who do you consider to be your guides or your teachers?
QU: Definitely spirit. The plant spirits and my spirit guides are my greatest guides. I got into food because I was doing art, and then I literally felt like God was like, “Food, more food! Do food, grow food!” And so it was literally like, dragging me tooth and nail over into this path.
And then next, humans: Maurice Small, he is an Atlanta farmer, he’s an elder, I consider him like a father figure. He’s been a total guide for me, because I just started growing [plants] myself in January, so transitioning into this space where we’re gonna have plants and things like that was a little bit intimidating. Even though I knew I wanted to do that, and I knew that it was calling me, I didn’t want to front like I know what I’m doing and kill some stuff [laughs].
AO: What’s an early memory related to land, food, or plants, that continues to shape your work?
QU: I have so many memories that are attached to land. I am Caribbean, I’m from the Virgin Islands. I’m from St. Thomas by way of the projects in South Florida, so those are two very different experiences. I come from a place where we own our own land. Typically land is passed down through your family, so if you’re wise enough to keep it then you own it, and a good amount of people in the Virgin Islands do. So growing up having that attachment and also growing up connected to the beach, the sand, everything that comes from the ocean, I mean, I went to the beach every single weekend of my life.
When my mother got out of the military, she quickly descended into poverty, and we ended up in the Stanley Terrace projects, a food insecure neighborhood in Deerfield Beach, the smallest apartment you could imagine. So those memories totally shaped me. And it made me want my own sanctuary. It’s always been really important to me to have a comfortable, safe, peaceful home, and to be stable, and it also just made me dig and research and look into America and who owns land and why, and how they stole it, which is how I came to demanding and asking for our reparations for this project.
AO: Can you talk about why having a physical gathering and healing space is so important, especially for Black people?
QU: The main reason is, we want to be a beacon. We really want to be that symbol. There was a restaurant here called Paschal’s, where a lot of social activists would meet in the days of Martin Luther King, and them [laughs]. And it’s known for that. We want to be known for that too, and we want to take it a little bit further, to create that symbol for Black healing in Atlanta, and everywhere.
I’m healing. I’m not a healed person, far from it. This space is to heal me too. But there is a sense of victory that will be involved in this space, and there’s a sense of peace that comes from that relationship between what I call people of the soil—Black and indigenous people—and our return to the land.
AO: You talked earlier about Paschal’s that was known as a kind of hub of social activism, and I saw that you also collaborated to feed Black Lives Matter protesters this past summer. Can you talk a little bit more about the relationships between food, plant-based food, and movements for Black liberation?
QU: What we know of agriculture is built on knowledge, wisdom, and tenets that come from Africa. If you plant a rose seed in Georgia it’s gonna take on a different type of spirit than it does in Florida or New York. It’s gonna be different because of the water, the soil, everything. So that’s beautiful to me, and I wanted people to start to recognize those relationships. This project is not to say, “Hey, you need to be vegan.” It’s to say, “You need to be in relationship with more plants.” Whether that’s buying them and they’re in your home and you’re just looking at them, or they’re in your body.
I’m not here to tell anybody about how they should or should not consume meat. I’m a pescatarian, I’m not vegan. Nourish Botanica is plant based because I want to promote being in relationship with more plants.
AO: Are there any particular plants you’ve been cultivating a relationship with or learning a lot from recently?
QU: I love Holy Basil. I’m in love with adaptogens because they have supported me in my healing of my past addiction and alcoholism and my anxiety issues. Plus it tastes good, it has its own unique cool taste, so I’ve been using it in our mocktail mixes that we’ve been practicing on, but also I’m literally drinking Holy Basil tea right now [laughs]. And I have a whole bushel of it I burn for incense, it’s my best friend right now. That’s my boo.
AO: Imagine it’s the year 2070, or 5020, or 3000. We’ve toppled racial capitalism and white supremacy. What does Black people’s relationship to the land look like? What are we doing, what are we eating and growing?
QU: I don’t really picture it that different than we are now except that we’re continuing to live, we’re continuing to thrive...I guess my train of thought comes from two places. Because, again, in the Virgin Islands we have land, and in America we don’t. So to answer your question, it would be more like the Virgin Islands everywhere [laughs]. It would be a lot more of that connection with the land that just feels so natural, and it doesn’t feel like ownership of the land, it feels like this responsibility, because you’re growing on it, you’re living on it, and you’re passing it down. So that’s how I envision our future. What we’re eating is gonna probably be all plant-based. I know they’re gonna come up with some better vegan shrimp by then, I know it.
AO: I hope so [laughs].
QU: That’s a long time from now, 2070, my goodness...I’ll be a grandmother, I’ll probably be living in South Florida somewhere or in the Virgin Islands, doing what my grandmother did to me, which was teach me how to weed, because I guess she didn’t want to [laughs]. So I will be passing that on to them, it’ll be their turn. That’s a beautiful question, thank you for that.
AO: Did your grandmother have a garden for a lot of her life?
QU: My grandmother had so many plants. Me and my older brother and my grandmother would walk everywhere in the Virgin Islands, and no matter where she went she would always be like, “Ooh, let me get this.” She would be pinching plants from the side of the road [laughs].
She didn’t have her own house, but she had her own little area for her garden. And we would have to weed [laughs]. And we hated it, but I love it now. I can’t wait to go back and just go to that place, even though she’s gone now. Go back to that little piece of her property. She’s come to me in dreams, and every time she’s come to me it’s there, at that apartment.
AO: Is there anything else you wanted to say about your project, or how readers can support you?
QU: Well, we’re still fundraising. Initially I had put the fundraiser up for $60,000, which is what we estimated for the cost of just buying the land. But now, since we hit that goal I just was like, “Who am I if not someone that believes in myself and believes in this and believes in miracles?” So a few weeks ago I upped the goal to the total amount. I have everything listed out very specifically on the Gofundme so everyone can see exactly what we need the money for. The bulk of the money is for the land, and the rest is for building the greenhouse itself.
AO: Is there anyone you wanted to shoutout?
QU: Anima Mundi is an herbalist out of Costa Rica, they also have a shop in Brooklyn. I went to New York to do some research, and I went to go visit their shop. They introduced me to some other herbs, one of them is called Mucuna Root. And hopefully we’ll also be wholesaling from them.
And then there’s @lamalayerbalove. We’re doing some beautiful work as a collective to overturn all this systemic bullshit, but it’s a continuous effort and we have to look within. The stuff that we think is shameful or ugly or blame ourselves for really was programmed, so much of it in this proximity to whiteness dance that we’ve had to do for generations in order to stay alive. And so now we’re reclaiming ourselves and she [@lamayerbalove] supports that so much and I just love it.
Support Quianah in building the Nourish Botanica greenhouse eatery.