Image - Illyanna Maisonet and her book cover

Past Event

Illyanna Maisonet: Diasporican

Food is more than just sustenance or nourishment. Food brings us together and connects us to family, history, migration and beyond. Perhaps no one understands this better than food columnist Illyanna Maisonet, who has spent years documenting her family’s Puerto Rican recipes and preserving the island’s disappearing foodways through rigorous research.

Maisonet was the first Puerto Rican food columnist in the United States. Her San Francisco Chronicle column, “Cocina Boricua,” was dedicated to safeguarding traditional Puerto Rican recipes and exploring food throughout the Puerto Rican diaspora.

Maisonet’s cookbook, Diasporican, provides a visual record of Puerto Rican food, ingredients and techniques. She shares deeply personal recipes—some even passed down from her grandmother and mother—that trace the island’s flavor traditions to the Taino, Spanish, African, and even United States’ cultures that created it. Shaped by geography, immigration and colonization, these dishes reflect the ingenuity and diversity of their people.

Join as we celebrate and learn more about the essence of Puerto Rican culture and cuisine.

Notes

This program is part of our Food Lit series, underwritten by the Bernard Osher Foundation.

Bernard Osher Foundation

Photo courtesy the speaker.

December 5, 2022

The Commonwealth Club of California
110 The Embarcadero
Taube Family Auditorium
San Francisco, CA 94105
United States

Speakers
Image - Illyanna Maisonet

Illyanna Maisonet

Author, Diasporican: A Puerto Rican Cookbook; Twitter @eatgordaeat

Deborah Alvarez-Rodriguez

Executive Director, La Cocina; Member, Commonwealth Club of California Board of Governors—Moderator

Format

5 p.m. doors open & check-in
5:30–6:30 p.m. program
6:30 p.m. book signing
(all times PST)

COST

In-person:
$10 members
$20 nonmembers
$43 members with book
$53 nonmembers with book
Online:
$5 members
$10 nonmembers
$38 members with book
$43 nonmembers with book