A Love Letter

I’m Zeena Lattouf Joy, the founder and baker at Zeena Bakery. (I did name it after myself.) 

This is the first in a series of writings about various things–some directly, some tangentially–related to what we do here at Zeena Bakery. At the simplest level, we serve food. But hopefully, this post will provide more context. Today let’s keep it simple and start with introductions. 

Zeena Bakery, while named after me, is a love letter to my maternal grandmother, Tata Aida, photographed above with my grandfather, Sido Yousef. She lived with my family and raised me just as much as my mother did. With both my parents working, Tata often walked me to school in the mornings and picked me up in the afternoons. She cooked for our family, and sometimes I got to help her in the kitchen. 

Tata Aida was also the only grandparent I knew, so much of my identity is connected to her. She was the tether to a history I did not directly experience, but felt through our connection. When she passed away in July 2024, I was surprised to find myself mourning the grandparents I did not have a chance to know, the stories that were not passed down, and the recipes I did not get the chance to taste. I felt a deep sense of loss. I couldn’t help but wonder what it would have been like to grow up with them. What would it have been like to sit with my other grandparents the way I had with Tata Aida?  To watch my paternal grandmother, Teta Arabiyeh, prepare family meals and interact with my father and his siblings? What would I have learned? 

My paternal grandparents: Teta Arabiyeh and Jiddo Mahmoud with their children. My father is standing in the checkered sweater with his hand on his father's chair. 

This makes me think about all of our relationships with the people that came before us–and about the special person in your life that helped shape you. I imagine an onion peeling, from the inside out. The layers continue to multiply and grow larger around each of our concentric circles to the point that we begin to see and feel how we are all interconnected.

As much as Zeena Bakery is a love letter to my Tata Aida, it is also a love letter to all of our ancestors–yours and mine. This shop happens to focus on foods that represent Arab culture given my identity and lineage, but it’s meant to be a place to celebrate the things that make us who we are. 

My identity: American - Palestinian - Jordanian - Lebanese.  Or Arab-American. Or American-Arab. Arab? Woman of the Levant!... when I’m feeling exotic. Immigrant-American on most days. 

I started to daydream about Zeena Bakery in 2022 and 2023, while working in behavioral psychology. I found myself longing to work with my hands, to revive forgotten recipes, to feed people bread. The dreams became an idea that I couldn’t shake. By November 2023, I could no longer continue my status quo. I put in my two weeks notice–and December 1, 2023 was my last day of work. The next six months were one big: “now what?” The inertia of doing anything without structure was so great and progress was gradual. But by October 2024, momentum had built and Zeena Bakery was something bigger than a shop for my friends and family to buy a box of cookies out of support. 

Enter you. Person who I don’t know but would like to introduce myself to. And who I certainly would love to know more about! Welcome to Zeena Bakery. We appreciate that you decided to stop by. 

Warmly, 

Zeena