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As our 2025 partner for LGBTQ+ Pride Month, we had the wonderful opportunity to chat with Von Diaz, an illustrious storyteller, writer, and documentarian whose work explores the intersection of food and culture. Check out this interview to learn more about her life, career, and celebrated cookbooks.  

First, tell us a bit about yourself! How did your family and upbringing lead you to a career in food and storytelling?   

I was born in Puerto Rico and raised in Atlanta, and I spent a lot of my childhood traveling between those two places. As I became a cook and started looking closely at the food my family prepared alongside the Southern food I grew up eating, I began to see parallels. The Caribbean and the U.S. developed a deep connection through the Transatlantic slave trade, which informed the food and culture of both places. And as a documentarian and storyteller, I’ve found that food is one of the few truly universal aspects of human existence. It’s a powerful unifier that encourages exchange and understanding, and celebrates creative, resilient communities while honoring tradition and heritage.  

Your first cookbook, Coconuts & Collards, explores the intersection of food culture in Puerto Rico and the American South. Can you talk about your approach to developing recipes that balances both innovation and nostalgia?   

Whenever I ask people who the best cook in their family is, they almost always say their grandmother. Women are the keepers of culture in every society, and are so often the ones to preserve culinary history through recipes. My grandmother was that kind of cook, and her food set the foundation for my palate and way of cooking. When I develop recipes, I want them to be approachable, straightforward, and balanced with some room for interpretation. Because I want anyone, regardless of cooking experience or skill, to be able to prepare delicious food. But so often my recipes are inspired by a smell or flavor memory, and my strongest food memories come from my time in Puerto Rico as a child, sitting at the counter in my grandmother’s kitchen. 

What are some of the biggest or most surprising cultural throughlines you experienced while conducting research for your most recent cookbook, Islas: A Celebration of Tropical Cooking?   

Through my research, I discovered that islanders are among the scrappiest, most resilient people on Earth. Storms have always been unpredictable, and generations of islanders have cultivated ancestral knowledge around how to survive and, importantly, how to feed themselves despite it all. Making magic out of what’s available—the leaves that sprout from root vegetables such as taro; the otherwise inedible parts of animals such as hooves and tails—is the way they’ve always cooked. It’s an expression of heritage, adaptability, and fortitude. Their ingenuity, time-tested family recipes, and age-old cooking techniques provide a window into island life and the ways in which their cuisines reflect a profound connection to tradition and ancestry. Because what we eat is about much more than what tastes good or what is available. Through Islas, I discovered that cuisines tell rich stories and preserve our histories, but they also provide a road map for survival.  

Tell us about your inspiration for the Puerto-Rican Style Pimento Cheese recipe that you contributed to the Tasty Pride cookbook.  

Tasty Pride is such a special book, and I was excited to contribute. Reflecting on queer food spaces, my earliest memory was being invited to a potluck in college. At that time, LGBTQ communities were much less visible and arguably more vulnerable, and so for many of us we had to maintain some level of secrecy around our identities. We often created safe spaces around meals, potlucks, dinners, brunches, cookouts. My pimento cheese recipe is a nod to my Puerto Rican and Southern identities, a twist on a classic and exactly the kind of thing I would have brought to a gathering.  

Where can our readers learn more about your work and purchase your cookbooks?  

You can visit my website www.vondiaz.com to learn more about my work, and view my archive of articles, audio stories, videos, recipes, and other publications. My Substack, La Piña is a space where I get personal about food, exploring the people, ingredients, and systems that shape our cuisine. For my latest events, announcements, and what I’m cooking and eating, I’m @cocinacriolla on Instagram. And you can find my books online at Bookshop, which sources from independent booksellers, or wherever you typically purchase books.