Bibb Country: Unearthing My Family Secrets of Land, Legacy and Lettuce

Bibb Country: Unearthing My Family Secrets of Land, Legacy and Lettuce

Bibb Country follows Lonnae O’Neal back in time as she pieces together generations of her family history against the sweep of American history, unearthing hidden triumphs, traumas, and a specialty strain of lettuce along the way. “ Bibb Country is a searing meditation on one American family’s tangled origins [...] Lonnae O’Neal stares history in the face and doesn’t blink once.” —Jabari Asim, author of We Can’t Breathe "O’Neal is a wonder and a truth-teller.” —Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies Five years ago, Lonnae O’Neal grabbed some seeds for her backyard garden, including seeds for Bibb lettuce. She had no idea how deeply she’d wind up digging, or how far she would travel. Lonnae’s fourth great-grandmother, Keziah, was enslaved by the Kentucky Bibb family, including John Bigger Bibb, who developed the Bibb lettuce strain, which remains a culinary darling more than 150 years later. John Bigger Bibb was executor of his father Major Richard Bibb’s will, which freed Keziah and dozens of other Black Bibbs decades before the Civil War, leaving them with a powerful, complicated legacy. Major Bibb is widely believed to have fathered one of Keziah’s granddaughters. Another white Bibb, or Bibb-adjacent enslaver, whose identity is shrouded in mystery, fathered Keziah’s grandson, who is the beginning of the line for Lonnae. Through historical records, genealogical science, oral histories, and interviews, Lonnae brings Bibb family stories (both Black and white) to life, and traces the legacy of the Black Bibbs’ migration from Kentucky to Southern Illinois, and beyond. A mix of memoir, food history, and cultural critique, Bibb Country explores what it means to be descended, through enslavement, from a family whose wealth and power helped shape a nation, and confronts the history that echoes through one family’s generations, and, by extension, every generation of America. “ Bibb Country is a searing meditation on one American family’s tangled origins, inseparable from the region where its members labored, struggled, and eventually strived. Its interrogation of the personal, the public, and the political is always vibrant, often intense, and consistently illuminating. Lonnae O’Neal stares history in the face and doesn’t blink once.” —Jabari Asim, author of We Can’t Breathe “Lonnae O’Neal’s deeply intimate Bibb Country is a revelation, a reckoning, and an elegy that should be taught in every high school and college history class in this country. She unearths six generations of her family’s history against the backdrop of our nation’s shameful legacy of enslavement, sexual violence, and injustice, and its present-day incarnations. With righteous rage and a voice that ignites the page, O’Neal is a wonder and a truth-teller.” —Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies “This book is a gift—a deeply personal family treasure unearthed by the author and graciously passed along to you, the reader. With meticulous attention to detail, Lonnae chronicles a multi-generational story of beauty, brutality, and resilience that fills the space between the pages of American history. Along the way, a vision of who we are as both a people and a nation comes into sharp, unforgettable focus. A truly amazing literary work.” —Aaron McGruder, creator of The Boondocks “ Bibb Country made me happily reconsider everything I knew about land writing—Lonnae O’Neal patiently ushers forth a new genre in this breathtaking literary feat.” —Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy: An American Memoir LONNAE O’NEAL is a senior writer for Andscape. Prior to that, she was a Washington Post reporter and columnist for more than two decades. She is the author of I’m Every Woman: Remixed Stories of Marriage, Motherhood, and Work . I tried to find it at a nearby farmers market first. I met a young farmer who said he and his brother used to sell Bibb lettuce for three dollars a head, but they’d stopped a few years earlier because there wasn’t enough demand. Next, I searched the produce aisles of a few local grocery stores, but none of them carried anything in the Bibb lettuce family. Finally, I found two kinds of butter lettuce, of which Bibb is a type, at Whole Foods, and decided that would have to do. Having secured the greens, I shifted gears. I willed myself to evolve into a better and higher version of my salad-fixing ways. I remembered what I’d read about the softness of Bibb lettuce leaves and vowed to dress it lightly. As I walked the grocery aisle, everything I was tempted to buy prompted me to think deeply about complementary pairings and ideal ways to awaken lettuce flavor. I bought a lime because it seemed like the right thing to do. Then I bought a lemon, because a lime might not be right. I rejected a classic ranch or chunky blue cheese, or an organic creamy Caesar dressing, as too heavy for the tender Bibb constitution, and I looked instead for something that telegraphed sophistic