"Cooking is always a good time for healing, so you must wash your pain, rinse and wash again until you too have washed out your bitterness in the green bile."
At the end of each chapter of GraceLand, Abani includes either a cooking recipe or supplementary information on a plant native to Nigeria, which calls into question for whom the book is written. By including cooking recipes and traditional cultural signifiers such as the kola nut, Abani finds a way to connect to his Nigerian, and even African audience. Beatrice, Elvis’ mother, explained that she was preparing Elvis for her impending death by teach him how to cook, among other things, and by leaving behind a written record. In a way, Abani is taking on the role of the mother by providing a record of culture and identity, food being a very important aspect of such. By imparting this knowledge, Abani creates a connection to his Nigerian audience, and subsequently ties his non-Nigerian audience to important artifacts of culture. Furthermore, the inclusion of these recipes and encyclopedic entries about the kola nut acts as a kind of reversal in the relationship between importing and exporting culture with the western world.
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