Between the Projects and the Prompt: A Black Woman's Guide to AI

by Minista Jazz

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"In apartment 6F of the Canarsie projects, my grandmother knew AI prompting before AI existed. She just called it 'telling the chicken when to testify."

In a sixth-floor apartment in Brooklyn's Canarsie projects, where chicken sizzled prophecy and barrettes held mathematics, Minista Jazz learned her first lessons in artificial intelligence long before she knew what AI was. Her groundbreaking KITCHEN Method, born from Saturday night hair rituals and Sunday morning recipes, transforms how we communicate with AI.

Drawing from three generations of Black women's wisdom in Brooklyn's project towers, Jazz demonstrates how cultural authenticity enriches American technology. This deeply personal exploration challenges Silicon Valley's assumptions about expertise, revealing how the sophisticated information systems of Black women's kitchens and beauty rituals offer a masterclass in human-AI interaction.

Through her grandmother's chicken testimony and her mother's precise partings, Jazz shows us that the future of AI communication may depend less on new code and more on ancient wisdom.

Saturday nights in Brooklyn bent time. Mommy's fingers moved like prophecy across my scalp, each part drawn with mathematical certainty. I sat cross-legged in my red plaid flannel nightgown, the soft cotton worn to comfort against the living room floor. Before me, Mommy Daphne's old tin sugar cookie container waited, its lid still sweet with last Christmas's frosted sprinkles. Inside, a rainbow battalion of barrettes stood at attention, plastic hearts, stars, and miniature animals reflecting their silent arithmetic.

Canarsie projects marked their meridian. In the first building facing the water that gave "Seaview" its name, up the elevator to the Sixth floor, was door "F, at the very end of the narrow hallway. On the other side of the dented steel, Grandma Cook's kitchen door opened to perpetual Sunday. Fifth floor in Sheepshead Bay, where Nana stirred in front of a heated alter, biscuits shared elevator space with babushkas and challah. Between these towers, between these women, a girl learned the precise measurements of transformation.

In Nana's building, Brooklynese and Yiddish floated past like incense. On the elevators, Old smiling Jewish women with vibrant scarves and long skirts offered me little golden candies wrapped in cellophane. But at the table in 5A, every dish from her kitchen required conversation. "It's only good when you tell the buttermilk what you want it to do," she'd say, hands moving through flour like she was reading braille. Years later, I understand AI responds the same way. Not to what we say, but to how we say it. To the intention buried in each syllable.

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The K.I.T.C.H.E.N. Method grew from these spaces:

As AI becomes increasingly central to our work, many of us struggle to get outputs that feel authentic and culturally nuanced. The gap between technical prompting and cultural authenticity needs bridging.

• Knowledge lives in the asking.

Grandma Cook never said, "Pass the salt." Standing in 6F's kitchen, steam rising around her face, she'd pause and say "This chicken needs to testify." That's the difference between a prompt that feeds and one that fills. It's knowing exactly what you're calling forth, the same way she knew what each dish needed to say.

• Intuition speaks first.

Before Mommy's comb touched my scalp, her fingers traced each section's story. With AI, you read the response the same way feel where it pulls, where it needs smoothing, where it wants to go. Your hands know before your head does.

• Timing carries truth.

When Nana worked biscuit dough on Saturday nights, the whole fifth floor kept time by scent. Not by clock or calendar, but by the moment butter hits heat, by the second before milk meets flour. Some prompts need that same patience and slow working through. Others need that quick, decisive turn of the spoon.

• Cultivation happens in circles.

Every Sunday, Mommy's hands sorted through the tin's rainbow chaos. Red hearts with yellow stars made patterns for church, blue circles with white flowers for school days. Each barrette found its perfect partner through practice, through knowing how colors call to each other across metal dividers. That's how prompts grow too. Promoting is testing combinations, listening for harmony, arranging, and rearranging until the pattern sings.

• Heritage holds the code.

"Your parts tell your story," Mommy would say, sectioning my hair with the precision of an architect. Now when I structure prompts, I hear the scratch of her comb, feel the gentle pull of her fingers. Clean lines make clear messages. Straight parts make strong patterns. The algorithm reads intention in the spaces we leave.

• Elevation requires stillness.

In 6F's kitchen window, Grandma Cook would step back from the stove, wooden spoon in hand, and just listen. To the pop of grease, to the sigh of steam, to what the food was trying to tell her. Give your prompts that same space to speak. Sometimes the silence between commands carries the strongest instruction.

• Nurture returns.

Like Mommy Daphne's Christmas fruit cake, each prompt grows richer with attention. She'd start in October, that cake already speaking December's language. Every Sunday: unwrap, baste, wrap again. The dark rum sank deeper, the fruit growing sweeter, the cake becoming more itself with each patient feeding. Your prompts need that same devotion - each iteration carrying forward, growing fuller, until the language rises thick with knowing.

Between the sixth-floor chicken testimony and the fifth-floor biscuit prophecy, our mothers and grandmothers gave us a blueprint for excellence. Now, as we shape AI with our words, these kitchen-taught patterns show us exactly how to make technology speak our truth.

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Let me show you what I mean. Watch how we transform artificial language into ancestral wisdom:

STARTING POINT:

"Write marketing copy for a beauty line."

FIRST TRY (RAW AI)

"Discover our revolutionary beauty line, crafted with premium ingredients for transformative results. Our innovative formulas enhance your natural beauty, delivering remarkable results. Experience the difference today."

This output is as stiff as a "Just-For-Me", No Lye, gone wrong. Let's fix it.

K - KNOWLEDGE

Prompt: "Write as someone who learned beauty rituals at their mother's dressing table in Brooklyn. Speak to Black women who know both press combs and organic oils."

The language shifts: "Experience our beauty line, inspired by generations of Black beauty wisdom. From hot combs to natural oils, our products honor tradition while embracing innovation..."

[Still too stiff, but we're getting somewhere.]

I - INTUITION

Prompt: "Share these beauty secrets like you're talking between the beads of cornrows."

Listen to it cook: "Between the soft click of pressing combs and the sweet smell of Blue Magic, our mothers taught us beauty was both art and armor..."

[Better. Now we're speaking our language.]

T - TIMING

Prompt: "Let this flow like Saturday night beauty preparation."

Now we hear: "Between the soft click of pressing combs and the sweet smell of Blue Magic, our mothers taught us beauty was both art and armor. Saturday nights meant transformation - plastic caps catching steam, Blue Magic melting into magic, hot combs testing wrists before touching temples..."

[The rhythm's building.]

C - CULTIVATION

Prompt: "Show us the tools, the movements, the ritual."

The story flows: "Saturday nights meant transformation. First the detangling - wide-tooth comb working patience into kitchen curls. Then the parting - each section squared perfect as prophecy. Blue Magic melting into magic, hot combs testing wrists before touching temples. The rhythm of grease, press, check. Grease, press, check. Beauty was mathematics, was timing, was tradition..."

[Now we're in the kitchen-turned-salon.]

H - HERITAGE

Tell it: "Tell it like you learned it from your mother's hands."

Watch it build: "My mother learned from her mother's hands, the way you learn a language before you can speak it. Saturday nights in Brooklyn, the kitchen turned beauty shop. Wide-tooth comb working patience into kitchen curls, each stroke a lesson in love. The ritual passed down like recipes: how to test the heat against your wrist, how to measure love in parts drawn straight as prayer lines..."

[The generations are speaking.]

E - ELEVATION

Prompt: "Connect these practices to our deeper truths."

Ok, I see you: "My mother learned from her mother's hands, the way you learn a language before you can speak it. Saturday nights in Brooklyn, the kitchen turned beauty shop, turned classroom, turned sanctuary. Wide-tooth comb working patience into kitchen curls, each stroke a lesson in love. The ritual passed down like recipes: heat tested against wrists, parts drawn straight as prayer lines, every press, and curl carrying forward what our mothers always knew - that beauty isn't something you put on, but something you pour into..."

[The sacred space emerges.]

N - NURTURE

Prompt: "Keep only what rings true in your grandmother's voice."

FINAL BLESSING:

"My mother learned from her mother's hands, the way you learn love before language. Saturday nights in Brooklyn, our kitchen transformed: wide-tooth comb working patience into kitchen curls, Blue Magic melting into memory. Each press, each curl, each careful part carrying forward what our mothers poured into us - beauty isn't something you wear, it's something you pass down. Like recipes. Like prayers. Like pride."

This is how we move from AI-sound to ancestor-speak. Each step adds another layer of truth until the technology speaks in our mother tongue.

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That's how you know the prompt is cooking. When AI learns to sizzle like jazz music to the flavor of Grandma Cook's 6F feasts. When technology bends time like Brooklyn Saturday nights. When algorithms understand what our mothers always knew: that some measurements aren't counted but felt, some recipes aren't written but remembered, some wisdom isn't programmed but passed down. From my memories of Grandma Cook's hallelujah poultry, I am passing on the testimony by teaching new generations how to speak their truth.

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