Author and Chef Illyanna Maisonet discusses her award-winning cookbook, the recipes, the stories and the process of cookbook writing. There will be Puerto Rican-inspired snacks.

In this visual record of Puerto Rican food, ingredients, and techniques, Illyanna traces the island’s flavor traditions to the Taino, Spanish, African and even United States’ cultures that created it. These dishes, shaped by geography, immigration and colonization, reflect the ingenuity and diversity of their people. Filled with travel and food photography, Diasporican reveals how food connects us to family, history, conflict, and migration.

Maisonet’s San Francisco Chronicle column, Cocina Boricua, focused on food throughout the Puerto Rican diaspora. She has dedicated her career to documenting Puerto Rican recipes, including her family's, and preserving the Puerto Rican diaspora's disappearing foodways through rigorous, often bilingual research. 

She is the recipient of the  2022 James Beard Foundation Award for Emerging Voice and an International Association of Culinary Professionals award winner.  Her work has been featured with Rancho Gordo, Bon Appetit, Saveur, Food & Wine, Lucky Peach, Food52, Los Angeles Times and more.

“Her book is a memoir, cookbook, and retelling of Puerto Rican history and it’s a testament to her life’s work of documenting and preserving food throughout the Puerto Rican diaspora.”—NPR

Each participant will go home with their own copy of Diasporican, compliments of SFPL. 

Connect:
Illyanna Maisonet - Website | Illyanna Maisonet - Instagram | Illyanna Maisonet - Twitter