Today we’d like to introduce you to Madhushree Ghosh
Hi Madhushree, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I am the daughter of refugees (from what’s now Bangladesh when India got divided into three in 1947 by the British) and an immigrant to America. As a graduate student in biochemistry, I missed home terribly and tried to cook my mother’s Bengali dishes as best as I could.
Over the years, through my work in cancer diagnostics, and also understanding that food is more than an emotion, more than nourishment, more than culture, more than history, it’s an indication of what we are and how we got here, I wrote Khabaar: An Immigrant’s Journey of Food, Memory and Family, an award-winning food narrative memoir focused on chefs, cooks, and street food vendors and the story of food as it travels through immigration, migration and indenture. Through this I also talked about my own life as a woman of color in science, an author, a daughter, and a woman who flourished after an abusive marriage to a fellow immigrant with borderline narcissistic personality disorder.
I am interested in how food is grown, especially in our community and how farmers work toward sustainability and in 2023, my TEDx talk, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Food” highlighted East African women refugees who farm in San Diego to connect community, people, food and where we belong.
Continuing on this journey to ask what it means when we belong, I now run a global literary salon and supper club that focuses on mindful food, and conversations with chefs, authors, community leaders and activists on how we can make this world better, starting small, from our immediate community and expanding with intention, joy and purpose.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Depends on what you mean by smooth! Nothing is smooth and everything is.
To get a PhD and postdoc in molecular biology then degrees in business management, conflict management and negotiations put me on a path of corporate success, highlighting women of color, oncology patient advocacy, and partnerships with oncology key opinion leaders, laboratories, pharmaceutical company leaders and oncologists. But all that remains false if I didn’t focus on what matters to all of us–who are we, where do we belong and how can we make the world a better place for the generation that is still unborn.
In order to do so, I had to focus on living my truth–tell the world I was a change maker, an activist, an author, a partner in working with the underprivileged BEFORE I was a scientist and corporate leader. This is difficult to articulate, and difficult for my science community to understand where a scientist is one first and only that. Life isn’t binary so I live my truth–where kindness, change, social activism comes first.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am an author and founder of a global supper club and literary salon. I focus on conversations around food, travel ways, and what it means to eat–what does it say about us, the culture, the origins of a cuisine and how does that inform us from a social justice perspective. For example, tea or chai is considered very Indian or South Asian. However, tea was cultivated on the Darjeeling and Assam regions of India by the colonizers, the British when they took the tea plants in China and repeated that process. Of course, South Asia was already cultivating different types of tea plants, but it is a very colonial concept. The idea of masala chai, again, very Indian, came from the fact that the last powdered flushes of tea leaves–the very dregs–needed to be sold by the British from those estates, so they made it as ‘desi’ or palatable by the Indians by adding in ginger, black pepper, cloves etc–which the Indians made better/sweeter with sugar (from China) or molasses (homegrown). The way tea traveled, whether through India or through America is a story of colonization, adoption and making a cuisine or concept as native as masala chai.
I love stories that tell us about where we came from, what we are doing and where we are headed. Alongside working with chefs, literary stars and food historians, I love telling these stories, working with other change makers to show how interesting food is, besides, taste, spice and flavor, and how we can respect the origins and make a dish our won.
I am known for my food stories, conversations around KhabaarCo, my global supper club that takes curated groups of people around the world to eat, converse, learn and leave with a fresh sense of belonging and knowledge, and for my writing on food and using food as a social justice tool.
What sets me apart? It’s the science and the creative brain working in parallel–one can use both sides of our brain to create art. I believe the pie is large enough for all of us, and believe in collaborations, conversations and a mutual respect for what the other brings to the table.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
Success is the spark I see in my readers, my listeners and my supper club participants. Once they see they belong in a community that is supportive, collaborative, creative and will champion the causes that matter to ALL of us–to see a better world, and they come back to me to say, “Madhushree, your words rang true to my heart,”–I know I have succeeded. One step at a time to make the world better by being a better neighbor and community member.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.writemadhushree.com
- Instagram: @writemadhushree
- Facebook: Madhushree Ghosh
- Twitter: @writemadhushree
Image Credits
Author Photo: Natalie Joy Mitchell Photography
Additional Photos: Gary S Greer
