My name is Keaun Michael Brown, and I’m the author and curator of “Sueñitos de Strangers,” a community cookbook that also collects people’s stories.
If you Google “sueñito” it will probably translate to “a little nap.” But if you talk to someone who speaks Spanish, they’ll tell you it’s the kind of thing you can’t help but ruminate on as you think, “What if?”
It’s the kind of thing you see when you look into your partner’s eyes and wonder what’s to come. It’s the kind of thing you hold close to your chest to protect it from its own fragility. Or maybe you’ll shout it from the rooftops to speak its power into existence.
Growing up, my Ma would always tell me, “Keaun, there’s stories all around you. Listen to them and learn the things I can’t teach you.” So for me, I feel like I was raised by stories. Old Black aunties on rocking chairs recanting old tales. Barbers telling me about rigged sport outcomes. OGs on the block warning me to not follow the same path.
Every person has a story to be told—a piece of themselves to be learned from and given the space to grow. These stories must be protected; otherwise they fade with time.
However, if we tell stories and eat with the same spices, over the same scents, while thinking the thoughts people long passed thought, then these “sueñitos” never die.
I hope you see something you like in my cookbook. I hope you see something that excites you. I hope you make memories from these stories and recipes.
If you feel inspired by this and want to add your own submission to the next “Sueñitos de Strangers” collection, fill out this form!
After all, what’s more human than having a little dream?
Un Sueñito de Kate Isabelle Jones
Kate Isabelle Jones: Bissap (pronounced bee-sap) is a special part of my childhood. It’s a frozen treat you encounter on the side of the road, made by families in the city of Abengourou on the Ivory Coast.
It’s my favorite treat, and a reminder of my roots. While it’s an Ivorian treat, I am not. But I was born there—my family lived there when I was little, while my parents did missionary work with an eye doctor.
But what’s special about this very Ivorian thing I love is that I have loved it in my own way by having had it more in my home in the U.S. than I ever did in Abengourou.
It’s a reminder that while I used to be there, I’m now here and that’s ok. Every time we go back to Ivory Coast, we buy dried hibiscus flowers so that when we’re back here, we can spend a few hours making bissap, enjoying one a day, hoping they’ll last until we can go back again and start all over.
I hope that, if and when you make this, you too feel transported.
Ingredients
- Water
- Sugar
- Dried hibiscus flowers
- Small plastic baggies
Preparation
- In a large pot, place your dried hibiscus flowers, sugar and water using a 1-to-1-to-2 hibiscus flowers, sugar, to water ratio.
- Set the pan on the stove and bring the mix to a boil.
- Once the liquid has turned into a dark red/purple color, strain out the flowers and allow the liquid to sit and cool.
- Once cooled, funnel the liquid into small plastic baggies, like the ones someone would use to ice a cake.
- Once the bag is filled with the desired amount, tie the bag closed and put it in the freezer.
- Once frozen, take it out and bite one of the pointed corners of the baggie to open it. Enjoy your bissap!
What’s your sueñito? What’s your little dream?
Kate: What I’ve always wanted and dreamt of, is living a life where I really accept everything about who I am. A life where I find full confidence and comfort, even with the fact that I feel like I don’t really have a clear-cut identity.
What’s bissap?
Kate: Bissap is hibiscus flowers that we boil and make a juice out of. Bissap is actually just the name of the juice we make from the flower, not the flower itself. Then you put them in little bags and tie them with little strings and freeze them.
What does it taste like?
Kate: It’s tart, it’s fresh and it hits you, but then it really brings you back down with the sweetness. It really feels like you’re eating a flower. It’s hard to describe, but it’s easier to experience.
You said people sell it on the streets in Ivory Coast, right? How do they keep it cold?
Kate: Girlie, I don’t know. They just do (laughs). You could either get it on the street or in the market in a freezer somewhere. Families make it all the time, too, in their homes and just bring it outside, and hope they sell it quickly.
Have you been able to find it in the states?
Kate: I’ve never found out here, but I’ve also never really looked for it. Usually whenever we go back to Ivory Coast, we bring back bags of dried hibiscus leaves. You can get hibiscus juice and freeze that, or buy that here, but it’s not the same because it’s not from home, you know?
Have you ever had agua de jamaica? It’s also dried hibiscus leaves made into a juice. Do you feel like it tastes the same or similar to how it does back home?
Kate: I think it does taste different because bissap is so strong. It’s very, very strong. In frozen form it’s even more concentrated with the ice. It’s kinda funny, because you’ll be trying to get the juice out and you’ll just kinda suck out the juice and spit out the ice. Who gets bissap for the ice?
What’s your favorite memory with bissap?
Kate: I think my favorite memory is going back home that first time, getting it, and then having that feeling of “yea I’m having it again!” The flavours remind me that I’m home. I left the Ivory Coast when I was five.
Is Ivory Coast Home for you?
Kate: I consider it a home. I mean I don’t know if it’s home home but I call it home. I’m also one of those people that wherever I am, it’s home.
There’s this term I made up: unfamiliar nostalgia. That feeling you’re at a place where you have a diasporic or ancestral background, and everything feels familiar but foreign at the same time. Does that resonate with you at all?
Kate: That’s exactly what it feels like. It’s so crazy. It’s been a big part of my life, truthfully. Feeling really connected to these identities that I didn’t fully live, but still lived you know? Even just having lived there for a bit and being really connected to them I feel like it has still changed the trajectory of my life had we never left the U.S.
When it speaks to you, does it sound like home?
Kate: Yeah. Yeah it does.
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Keaun Michael Brown is a Mirror Indy freelance contributor. You can reach him at brownkea@iu.edu.
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