LAUNCHING DECEMBER 6, 2026 · PRE-ORDER NOW
Kitchen School
A Memoir of a Love That Lasts
by Greta Sesheta
For every woman who has loved a mother the world didn't always understand, and treasures her still.
Paperback · $25
Order a copy from this site: $25 plus $8 shipping and handling ($33 total)
Coming to Amazon and other booksellers December 6.
Pre-order your signed copy here today.
Audiobook coming in early 2027
About the Book
"Hey, there. Are you hungry? 'Cuz there's food."
So begins Kitchen School, as Portia Louise Broyles Griffith welcomes you into her Los Angeles kitchen, where recipes are handed down, not written down, and where everyone she loves learns how to create something wonderful out of what looks like nothing.
Portia always meant to write a book called Kitchen School. She never did. Her daughter, Rev. Greta Sesheta, has written it for her, and in the writing uncovered a far larger story of lineage, legacy, and love.
Greta reaches back to her great-grandmothers born into slavery, says their names, and writes to them across the ages. Then she opens the door of the family home at 5000 Wall Street in mid-century Black Los Angeles, where her father rises to become a civil rights attorney and judge, and where her brilliant, generous mother is hospitalized again and again for what were called nervous breakdowns, while the family feels it has to keep its silence.
Told in eleven Movements like a piece of music, in prose, poems, and letters, Kitchen School moves through a fire in the night, the loss of a beloved brother, the passing of both parents, and the long, tender work of a daughter who becomes her family’s kin keeper.
This is a book about mothers and daughters, about the ancestors who guide us, and about the right to be angry and the grace to forgive. Most of all, it is about a love that lasts.
Come on in. There’s room at the table.
A taste of the book
“Welcome to my kitchen. I’m Portia. I only let people in my kitchen that I love and trust. So that means you must be in the right place. You can bring who you are, what you need, and what you have to offer.”
From the Prelude, “Well, Come On In”
This book is for you if…
- ...you loved your mother, and it was the most complicated thing you have ever done.
- ...you never heard your great-grandmother’s name spoken aloud growing up, and her absence has always felt like a wound.
- ...you know that food carries memory, and that some of the most important things you were ever taught happened at a stove.
- ...you are the one who keeps your family together: the calls, the visits, the birthdays, the hospital rooms, the prayers.
- ...you have been waiting for a memoir that treats ordinary Black women’s lives as the extraordinary literature they are.
What readers are saying
“Welcome to my kitchen. I’m Portia. I only let people in my kitchen that I love and trust. So that means you must be in the right place. You can bring who you are, what you need, and what you have to offer.”
From the Prelude, “Well, Come On In”
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About the Author
Rev. Greta Sesheta
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Rev. Greta Sesheta is a minister, writer, actress, dancer, and spoken word artist, and a native of Los Angeles. She lives in the hillside home where her mother once walked barefoot in her garden at sunrise.
A licensed spiritual practitioner since 1993 and an ordained minister of Centers for Spiritual Living and Agape International Spiritual Center since 2005, she founded 7-Pointed Star Ministries and facilitates its Sunday services, Sanctuary of the Spirit. She holds an MFA in Dance from UCLA and a Master of Consciousness Studies from the Holmes Institute. For twenty-five years, from 1999 to 2024, she co-produced and facilitated the Soul Sisters Retreat with Rickie Byars.
Her works include the CD and companion manual Calling in the Circle: Peace and Power Through Prayer and Meditation, Journal for the Journey, Poems to Wake Up To, and the bilingual Hoot and Howl Wise Old Owl series for children — Corky’s Tall Tale, Esani Remembers, Latif Finds His Spot, and Aria Takes Flight — published in English and Spanish by 7-Pointed Star Press. Her writing also appears in the anthology Our Stories, Ourselves: Narratives from Black Women in Africa and America. As a member of SAG-AFTRA, she has appeared in Grey’s Anatomy, Grace and Frankie, Shameless, and From Scratch, as well as in several national commercials and print campaigns.
Kitchen School is the book her mother, Portia Broyles Griffith, always planned to write. In it Greta gathers four generations of women, from her great-grandmothers born into slavery to her own life as a daughter, sister, and kin keeper, and the lessons that were shared through her mother’s kitchen. She is the proud mother of three daughters and the grandmother of three.