Excerpt: Interview with Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor--outtakes

now you mentioned that it's it's very difficult to be a black cultural worker yes I guess what are some of the problems that you encounter other than that people don't buy your work the problems are that if that's the work did you do finding work where do you work where do you do this thing that you do to feed your family and yourself I mean I know very few black artists who are dilettante this is not a leisure habit I mean you what you spend your you know people can understand if you're a plumber nobody would ask you to fix you know a sink for free that is your work but if you're a writer people think that you can just write something and you shouldn't get paid or you should get paid a little bit and I think people are educated all the people are educated to understand what the what it means to be an artist and to have that as a work your livelihood we have some dream some fantasy about the artists and Eiffel Tower in a garret I live in New York a garret in Greenwich Village rents for about six or seven hundred dollars a month it is the most picturesque way of living the life of an artist I don't want to live in a garret I just wanted my nice apartment written I'd have landlord problems you know so for that I'm willing to work and I want to have a place to do my work not only for my livelihood for my creative lively but I want because I want to this is a work I love I feel that I'm fortunate because I can work at what I love not just like it is the thing I want but it is very difficult for all artists I'll give that a white and black and being black is very hard and being a black woman artist is extremely difficult but on the positive side of it I'm very happy that I'm free enough to be able to choose that and so I'll go down and take whatever comes with making that commitment to my work I'm not going to do anything else I'm just gonna stay I just come from people got a lot of staying power and I'ma stay they gonna look up ten years I must still be there they're not gonna push me away I will not be moved what is this there must be there aren't I'm not only the only black there are no white culinary other fathers I am the only one in this country I don't know about the rest of the world always find a presumptuous when people say the greatest actor in the world I don't know I just know that I'm the only one white or black in this country a culinary anthropologist is a person who researches and writes about there's an anthropologist and I use food I talk about foods where they come from how they affect the our cultural life how they affect our national life foods to me like music you know and so I write about that no no all kinds of wonderful things about okra and watermelons and apples and that's what I was gonna ask you if I do you not only just write about food but you write about specific yeah where it came from how you know for instance a watermelon is a is an African fruit it when Stanley met Livingstone they were growing while in the congo basin okra is native to the nile valley in ethiopia and came cow peas that we so much in south carolina came over from there originally from India but that the will apear story and they came over from Africa made the Middle Passage along with us I must ask you about there has been a lot written about the preference of southern women over northern women there's a certain mystique according to some people about the southern women is there a woman is there anything to this oh yes there are some men who have the good taste and sense to choose southern women this other oriented woman northern women I live in the North now right so I'm not putting them down but something happened to us when we went north and something was lost and I think that there's um a thing about southern a mystique about southern women that is very attractive to those men who can deal with it who are not so northern themselves that they prefer another style I guess we are well I can't say it's a matter of taste just say a lot of men have a good taste to like suddenly you are in South Carolina this summer well I'll be working in the lowlands you foot and st. Helena Island of fusty Island and I will be working have been working for about two years now with Jeanne mateesah me photographer Jeanne is a excellent photographer and a good friend of mine and we're working on a project on the Gullah traditions and also doing an awful lot of work on the fuss key by work I mean I'm writing about it and she is been photographing and we'll be working some more this summer and hopefully sometime next year yeah we let you know yeah well I also have a new book of my own and my pub date is January 1st 1980 and was published by Doubleday & Company and it's called and if I show you my tenderness well the look is the book is so pretty it is so wonderful it's just a collection of people and places I've been and all the things that have happened to me since my first book came out in 1970 my first book was a cookbook called vibration cooking or the travel notes of a geeky girl and if you want to change your life write a book see everything changes in everybody starts to treat you different the man in the corner store you know your family your everything changes for you so I wrote a book this book about that and included in it is some of the I guess pieces articles an article about some of the articles that I've done sometimes I'm going