Dear Editor,

I must congratulate you for publishing Tastes Like Home. I find the series to be another satisfying exploration of Guyana’s cultural heritage. However, I need to draw to your attention a glaring error in the recent article on Chinese Fried Rice”A New National Dish.”

In that article, Cynthia Nelson stated, “It is the Chinese and the Indians that introduced rice to Guyana.” Well, that is incorrect. The Guyana Rice Producers Association (http://www.caribbeanngos.net/member_profile_pages/DS1/) states: “Rice farming was introduced in British Guiana (as the country was formerly called) during the 1700s from Carolina, North America.”

Rice was introduced in Essequibo 1738 by Laurens Storm van ‘s Gravesande “to supplement the diet” of enslaved Africans. Our Indian and Chinese ancestors came almost 100 years later. What is more significant is that it was Africans, specifically those from the West African “Grain Coast” (Sierra Leone and the Gambia) who provided “the seed (Oryza Glaberrima), the cultivation skills, and the cultural practices necessary for establishing rice in [Carolina and other parts of] the New World.” For further details on this topic, please see Judith A, Carney’s Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2001)

It is unfortunate that there are so many efforts, conscious or unconscious, to erase the contributions of people of African ancestry to human civilization. A similar tendency is also evident in Guyana. Guyanese at home and in the diaspora have an opportunity to correct this during 2007 – 2008, when programmes are developed to commemorate the bicentennial of the abolition of the trade in African captives and the170th anniversary of the emancipation of enslaved Africans in Guyana. The story of the contributions of Africans to the introduction and development of rice in Guyana is one that needs to be shared with all Guyanese.

Cynthia, do you know there may be a Portuguese connection in metem!

Peace.

Yours faithfully,

Vibert Cambridge, Ph.D., Professor

Department of African American Studies

Ohio University