When I went to Spellman, it was the first time I had seen women's lives really valued,

black women's lives valued for things that were not traditional.

And I developed just an incredible appetite for unconventional, different ways to live. I felt like someone pulled back a curtain and

said, young lady, this whole world could be yours. And when I looked through that

curtain I didn't see any pots or pans.

Welcome to Your Mama's Kitchen, the podcast that explores how we're shaped as adults by the kitchens we grew up in as kids.

I'm Michelle Norris, and we're going to spend some time today with Terry Jones.

She's a writer and a novelist, and she's a Georgia gal through and through.

She was raised in Atlanta.

She went to college in Atlanta.

And since she still lives there,

that's where we caught up with her.

Teari is a writer and accomplished novelist.

She was a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow for Creative Arts and her novel

an American Marriage won the Women's Prize for Fiction and NAACP Image Award and

it was an Oprah Book Club Selection. Now I've known Tyari for years and I know this about her she can really throw down in the kitchen.

She is a confident and creative cook.

But as you will hear in this episode, she took her own

sweet time finding her path in life and her path to cooking. You see, early in

life, Teari decided that she would never cook a thing, but she's turned to

someone who was always bringing food to the people around her, her neighbors,

her friends, her landlord. And remember what I said about her being a confident

...