Written as a concept book and organized as a series of two-page spreads, Maillard’s lyrical text begins with “Fry bread is food” and ends with the affirmation “Fry bread is you.” Maillard uses occasional first-person narration to speak directly to Indigenous children and to explain the cultural, historical, and familial significance of fry bread with lines such as: “Fry bread is history. Using the refrain “Fry bread is…”, Kevin Noble Maillard, a member of the Seminole Nation, Mekusukey Band, invites readers to the sensory-filled, community-building, and culturally-affirming experience of making and eating fry bread together. Sibert Medal for most distinguished information book for children and an American Indian Youth Literature Honor recipient, Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story is a love letter to Indigenous nations and communities centered around a simple food that represents a complex history of survival, relocation, and resilience. Jacobs, who adapted his recipe from his grandmother, said, “It gives me that tie, that connection to her that I had as a little boy.Winner of the 2020 Robert F.
The making of fry bread is matriarchal in many Native families, and allegiance to a particular recipe is deeply connected to the “fry bread lady” who made it. “We’re never going to be your mom’s or your auntie’s fry bread because that’s what you’re connected to.” “If we’re second place in your book, then we won,” he said. Ben Jacobs, the Osage co-owner of Tocabe in Denver, knows the restaurant’s fry bread can’t compete with the version his customers grew up with. Food stirs up the senses, which awaken memory - and the earliest experiences of taste and smell start at home. “She knew how much to put in to make it pop,” she recalled.Īs with many comfort foods, reference determines preference.
LeEtta Osborne-Sampson, a band chief in the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, adds sugar to her family recipe, just as her grandmother did. Marcie Rendon, an award-winning writer and a citizen of the White Earth Anishinaabe in Minnesota, describes the fry bread she makes as “regular size.” She makes it healthier, she said, by mixing in whole wheat flour, and sometimes adds powdered milk - “whatever was in the commodity box.”
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