A Feast for Joseph

Joseph’s Big Ride introduced readers to a young boy emigrating from South Sudan and his resettlement experiences in a North American city. A Feast for Joseph is a warm and inviting companion picture book that continues to evocatively explore how friendships – and community – can be fostered and formed.

In the East African refugee camp where Joseph and his Mama used to live, meals were a joyful, communal experience with everyone coming together to help prepare and share, and enjoy each other’s company. Joseph’s dinner table in his new city is too quiet and has too many empty seats for his liking. He misses his Abuba (an Arabic word for grandmother) and talks to her “across the ocean” by phone, eager for the day when she can travel to be with him again. Closer to home, Joseph calls his cousins and Auntie and Uncle who live across town, wondering when they will visit. He also extends an invitation to his teacher: “Please come to my house. We will cook for you.”

Everyone declines because they are too busy to attend. Wondering, “Where are the people?”, Joseph dines on his memories of music played on the awal (a percussion instrument of the Acholi, made from a pumpkin and played with thin wire made from bicycle spokes), and he optimistically picks greens from the garden so they are “ready when the people come.”

Sharing a meal together builds belonging. Joseph’s friend Whoosh, a curly-haired, exuberant girl who lives in the same apartment building, is keen to taste and try the Ugandan food he brings in his school lunch box, happily declaring, “I think I might love it.” When Whoosh and her Mami bake a cake and visit, Joseph finds the community he craves.

Ken Daley’s illustrations are a visual feast. The pages are alive with vibrant and joyful scenes full of laughter, movement and companionship. Standing side-by-side at the stove, Whoosh and Joseph stir and add ingredients to big pots of food as delicious aromas swirl about. Their mothers, in beautiful dresses with bright colours and patterns, “stretch their long bodies over the sofa like blossoming flowers”, and they chat. At the dinner table, bodies and souls are nourished.

Terry Farish co-wrote this picture book with OD Bonny, a writer, producer, and artist of traditional Acholi music and Afrobeat, who fled South Sudan and lived in Kyangwali Refugee Settlement in Uganda before immigrating to the United States. Bonny’s memories shape Joseph’s story, and the text is musical and authentic. There’s an undeniable “rhythm, a beat of people eating together”, as the dinner table hums with activity and is laden with Ugandan delicacies, including kwon (a thick dough made from millet), chapati (East African flatbread), dek ngor (traditional Acholi stew made with lentils or peas), and Sukuma wiki (a Swahili name for collard greens). A glossary is included at the back of the book.

In true community-building spirit, A Feast for Joseph captures and celebrates the magic that happens when individuals come together over food and friendship.