Debut You is an interview feature on Our Stories Matter blog. Debut authors who have released or have upcoming releases in 2023 are given six questions to answer about themselves and their book. Currently, the questions are the same for all authors. We hope you enjoy getting to know Mariah-Rose Marie and can offer your support. Go here for past Debut You features.
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Describe yourself in five words, then expound on one of them.
Inquisitive, hopeful, playful, empathetic, and direct—but I feel that being inquisitive is at the heart of everything I’ve ever loved.
As a child, fantasy was my favorite genre. Any world with interesting lore, talking animals, or mythic races appealed to me immensely. But as I grew up, the more I saw that nothing could be more fantastical and precious than the range of cultures, histories, and species we have here on our very real Earth. Celebrating, exploring, and caring for this diversity has informed my work since.
Explain your book’s journey—how long did it take—from idea to publication?
The amazing Ari Yarwood of Silver Sprocket reached out to me in late summer 2021, asking to pitch ideas to the team, and the concept for Cook Like Your Ancestors was the one they liked best! I began collecting recipes in the spring of 2022, finalized the script that autumn, and finished recipe testing and illustrating in June. All in all, the book took a little over a year.
The idea first came from friends’ comments on my cooking, saying it reminded them of the way their mom or some other family member cooked: with no recipe, and if there was one, then it was only used as a suggestion rather than a guide. I wanted to demystify this process, to show people that cooking shouldn’t be intimidating or expensive, and to share the different ways families all over the world make beloved foods.
Belief in oneself is important; besides you, who has been your cheerleader(s) throughout this process?
My mom, sister, and partner’s enthusiasm has been vital to this book. I’m blessed for the friends who were down to cook for hours together to test recipes, as well as the amazing team at Silver Sprocket. A big thanks is also due to my fellow artists and volunteers of the Cartoonist Collective for being so willing to help get the word out!
My biggest support, however, was my grandmother. I owe all my knowledge of intuitive cooking to her and my mother. She was so proud of what this book was to become but tragically passed just before the contract was signed. Creating this book helped me through my grief, and as I tried to carry her spirit throughout, I felt her holding mine, too.
Understanding your audience is essential. What do you know for sure about the audience you are writing for?
I can’t tell you how many skits, memes, and videos I’ve seen lately of someone showcasing the way their mom (usually Black, Latina / Indigenous, Arab, or Asian) handles food: frying things in boiling hot oil with bare hands, eyeballing ingredients, never using measuring tools, and sharing processes rather than recipes.
The way different communities have come together in appreciating these shared traits makes me feel seen, and I feel grateful to be born into a generation that seems committed to understanding our parents’ stories and cherishing our cultural heritage instead of assimilating, forgetting, or feeling ashamed for our differences. This book is for this generation, in honor of the ones before it, and a hopeful guide for those to come.
Tell us about your book.
Cook Like Your Ancestors is half cookbook, half guide to intuitive, affordable cooking. It’s full of family recipes—both blood and found—ranging from Navajo frybread and Yemeni marak temani to Cambodian samla curry and Icelandic skyrterta. It’s 96 pages, fully illustrated, and full of instructional comics to help readers rely less on teaspoons, grams, degrees, and exact cook times and more on the way humans have always cooked: by tasting, watching, smelling, listening, feeling, and remembering.
YOU did it, congratulations! Your story is going to be read by children or teens, educators, parents, librarians, book bloggers, etc. How do you feel, and are there any other projects in the works—that you can discuss?
I’m beyond grateful for those who have already shown support for it, so to think it will be out in the world come November is something that has yet to sink in!
I have two forthcoming books, one I cannot yet speak on and the other I am happy to tell you about, set for release in 2027 with Make Me A World. GO BACK & GET is a graphic novel about two mixed-race siblings traveling across the US to visit family in the South. It is a deep Atlantic dive into Afroindigenous dreaming, remembering, finding one’s place on stolen land, and an exploration of what happens when you shed all the lies we’re taught to look at what is left gleaming underneath.
Cook Like Your Ancestors: An Illustrated Guide to Intuitive Cooking With Recipes From Around the World
Mariah-Rose Marie | Silver Sprocket | November 15, 2023 | YA | Amazon | Bookshop
Mariah-Rose Marie is a graphic novelist, story artist, writer, and award-winning contributor to publications such as The New Yorker, The Nib, and Science for the People Magazine. Always with empathy—and often with humor—Mariah-Rose interweaves the individual and the global through stories that reach across political borders and personal identity.
When not working on her two forthcoming books, she can be found tending to urban gardens, cooking with a concerning amount of chilies, or practicing martial arts.
Connect with Mariah-Rose Marie: Instagram | Twitter | Website
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