Food Friends
Experimental Book
2020
At a very young age I moved from Jamaica to South Florida and it was a really big change one of those being in school, a lot of times people would criticize me for the food I brought and as a new person let alone a child it really impacted how I ate in order to fit into a new culture. I have had many conversations with friends of mine who would do things like convince themselves that they liked lunchables and looking back, instances like those really affected how we embraced our own food and culture while growing up.
I wanted to create something that would hopefully help children be aware of the cultural differences in food and express to them that it is okay that other people have different tastes, to lessen the shame others may feel about bringing food from their culture, home or wherever into a shared space like school.So I created the book Food Friends that centers around the character Booza who is starting at a new school and gets judged by new classmates about the food booza bought for lunch.
As well as planting the seed of learning, growth and development in the narrative, pages of the book can eventually be planted to grow herbs and/or vegetables from biodegradable seed paper for eating later, handmade by my self. ♻️
