Finding Freedom: April 2021 Book + Bottle Pairing

A few weeks ago I attended a webinar with the lady entrepreneurship group I’m part of (Babe Crafted - highly recommend) where an incredible local designer Lisa Gilmore did a talk about developing your signature style. The secret she said, was to own your uniqueness. You’re representing yourself to the world and to do that, you have to know your personal truth. We may be inclined to think of style as trivial, but really there’s a freedom in being able to express yourself in your personal truth. It might be wearing a ripped grunge shirt in high school to test your mother’s resolve, or it might be a woman donning pants at the turn of the century, or it might be a man wearing a dress and makeup. There are other ways, too, beyond just style, of representing ourselves. Our careers, who we keep as friends, and the politics/culture we align ourselves with - these all help tell the world who we are. We can find many ways to announce ourselves to the world - this is who I am.

Here in America, today, many of us take freedom for granted. We are free to dress as we choose, we are free to pursue careers without regard to the color of our skin or our gender, we are free to choose the significant other we spend our lives with. This hasn’t always been the case, as we’ll see. But are we really as free now as we believe ourselves to be?

THE BOOK
I’ve been anticipating the release of this book for a while. Libertie is an historical fiction novel based on real people and a real story: Dr. Susan Smith McKinney Steward was the first Black woman to become a medical doctor in New York State and had a daughter who moved with her husband to Haiti only to be disappointed by her options there, as well. Author Kaitlyn Greenidge fictionalized these women’s stories through the characters of Dr. Sampson and Libertie in order to explore the meanings of freedom for blacks during reconstruction, but also subconsciously challenging us to understand what freedom means for us today.

Libertie is a coming of age story of a free-born black girl in the mid to late 1800s. Her mother, also free-born, becomes the a medical doctor, opening a practice in Brooklyn, New York. Libertie’s character feels overshadowed by her mother’s success and by her mother’s aspirations for her - it’s a given that Libertie will also study medicine and use her “freedom” to become a black doctor as well in a world where that isn’t an option for most black people, much less for black women. As most young people would, Libertie resents having her future planned out for her and rebels against her mother, eventually marrying a man and following him to Haiti where’s she’s promised a life of freedom. She resents her mother catering to white women in order to fund her practice, and looks forward to a life in a country where all the people are black and equality reigns. What she finds there, however, is different than she expects, and she discovers she has lost some of the freedoms she had taken for granted in exchange for other freedoms.

I think one of the morals of the story is that we have the power to create our own freedoms, and that looks different to each of us. To Libertie’s father, freedom was only found in death. One female character gains the “freedom” to say whatever is on her mind because she had been labeled as “crazy” - she’d rather be considered “crazy” while having the freedom of speech than to be labeled as a “lady” and have to keep her mouth shut. One man escapes slavery only to be imprisoned by his love for a woman that ultimately drives him to his death. Two women seem free from the want of husbands or marriage, until Libertie realizes that they are lovers and are not actually free to love who they want publicly. Libertie’s mother is free-born but feels a slave to her duty to be a doctor for her community and to avenge the death of her sister who died unnecessarily because there were no doctors to treat blacks in their youth. A free male character seems to have the most freedoms of anyone in the novel, until we realize he is imprisoned by his father’s history, behavior, and expectations of him. Almost all the characters in the books are free-born, which eliminates the most obvious conception of freedom (vs. slavery) so that the reader can dive into the more nuanced aspects of this state of being.

At times, Libertie seemed ungrateful and insatiable. It was frustrating to watch her have almost no agency - for almost the entire book her desires for her own life were simply reflections of others’ expectations of her. And that was one aspect of the story - was Libertie free if she had no idea of or control over who she even was? But, this personality trait allowed the author to explore all the ways in which Libertie understood freedom as a young person and how her understandings change as she matures. She meets characters along the way that introduce us to layers of complexity to the meaning of freedom. Libertie keeps thinking that “freedom” is right around the corner, given by circumstance, but ultimately realizes she’s had freedom all along and just needed to trust herself.

We can also ask ourselves the same questions today, albeit about different areas of our lives. Yesterday, I was on a very interesting webinar with the American Booksellers Association and Danny Caine, owner of The Raven bookshop in Lawrence, Kansas, and author of How to Resist Amazon and Why. He challenged our assumption that we have a choice in how we shop, and argued that we are not, in fact, free, to shop and spend, because the government has allowed some businesses to operate outside the rules that the rest of us have to follow. Perhaps some of us are well enough off to resist Amazon, whereas others don’t have the financial freedom to spend more to make a political statement.

I also encourage you to read more about the real Dr. Steward here. It’s a fascinating piece of history that isn’t often told - I also wonder if we can truly consider ourselves “free” when we’re fed certain stories (but not others) through mainstream media and public education. I always loved that book Lies My Teacher Told Me because it introduced me to the fact that I had to do my own research to see the truth. I guess we’re at least free to take our own initiative towards freedom.

THE WINE
How perfect is it that I have a friend with a Haitian-American heritage and a tasty wine brand built around a story of freedom? Unplanned, but most perfectly aligned, I just had to introduce you to the Mermosa brand of wine. Desiree Noisette is an amazing St. Pete woman who has run several local businesses, most recently starting the Mermosa brand of wine - the official wine of boats, brunches, and beaches! She built her brand based on the story of her great-great-great grandmother - who negotiated her own freedom for her and her children and built a family of strong-willed successful Americans like Desiree. I let her tell her own story here:

Mermosa is inspired by a love story so powerful that it broke the chains of slavery. It's an epic tale of the founder's ancestors, Celestine, a Black Haitian woman, and Philippe Noisette, a white French gardener. They married in the late 1700s and blazed a trail of love and devotion that included Philippe claiming ownership of his wife and children to keep them out of the slave trade in Antebellum South Carolina.

Philippe's great success as a gardener led him to introduce the Noisette Rose, a flower bold and enduring like his beautiful Celestine. Upon his death in 1835, Philippe made sure that all of his money went to Celestine and their children. It could have led them out of the South to freedom, but Celestine took matters into her own hands and negotiated freedom. Her audacious spirit and their eternal love is infused in every sip of Mermosa.

We’ve chosen the Mermosa Bubbles as the wine this month because it’s so honest in what it is. An unpretentious, fun wine, made with orange and pineapple juice, for a mimosa like springtime sipper with a nod to the tropics - Florida and Haiti. As the weather starts warming up here in St. Pete, this is the perfect brunch wine, or wine to take to the pool. We also like that it’s only 8% alcohol so it’s perfect for day drinking without ruining your weekend! It makes perfect sense to pair Mermosa with Libertie, and we hope you enjoy the heritage and storytelling of both of these amazing items!

Other recommended books + bottles:

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison - uses storytelling to discuss difficult social themes

Dr. Konstantin Frank Riesling Reserve - started by a doctor, made by a woman in New York State