Today we continue our interview series with creators speaking at the monthly Picture + Panel event in Boston, which brings together two comic creators to talk about a specific topic. Robert Mgrdich Apelian and Shaina Lu, whose graphic novels explore “the intersections of culture, community and comestibles,” talk to us about food and comics. You can find more details on the Feb. 2 event here.
Picture + Panel is a monthly conversation series produced in partnership by the Boston Comic Arts Foundation, Porter Square Books and the Boston Figurative Arts Center, Picture + Panel provides thought-provoking discussions for the unique form of expression that is the comics medium.
Robert Mgrdich Apelian (he/him) is an Armenian American author-illustrator based in Everett, Massachusetts. He’s an avid reader of seinen manga and is especially passionate about making the most of comics as a storytelling medium. A primary goal of his work is to celebrate the diversity and cultural excellence of the Middle East and to portray it as something other than tragic and war-torn.
Shaina Lu (she/her) is a queer Taiwanese American community artist exploring the intersection of art, education, and activism. She graduated from Wellesley College and Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she studied arts in education. When she’s not creating community art, she works with young artists and makers in Boston’s Chinatown. Most important, she drinks juice every day, and she is full of sugar.
How did you get interested in food?
Shaina Lu: I think most people are kind of interested in food, at least as consumers.
Robert Apelian: Food has always been a central aspect of my family. My grandmother, parents, and my aunts are amazing chefs. When I got to my Grandma and Baboug’s house, there’d be a ton of mezze out, and my cousins and I would sit around the table talking and eating for hours. So like most people, it started with eating, and when I was old enough to need to cook for myself, I learned from my family, and it went on from there.
Why did you start making comics about your relationship to food?
Robert Apelian: I pretty much wanted to from the start! I knew I wanted to discuss the tangled complexity of Armenian identity, being a diaspora of a diaspora and all. Armenian food is such a good example of this — most of the food I grew up with, for example, is a mix of Lebanese dishes, Armenian dishes, dishes specific to my family’s village Kessab, and others. And if you go farther back in time, what qualifies as “Lebanese” or “Armenian” falls apart too — so many different cultures have all the same foods with slight modifications or by slightly different names — so it’s always been something that evokes this experience.
Also, people like seeing and reading about food, and I like drawing it. So that helps!
Shaina Lu: My first little comic about this was a small personal zine about my Yeh Yeh (paternal grandfather) and how he communicated through food and not words. I wanted to write about how emotions are carried through a body’s relationship with food.
How is food and family integrated into your work?
Shaina Lu: Noodle & Bao is mostly about food and family and how both of those things can change your community. Bao and their Ah-ma, Noodle, own a small gua bao cart in Town 99, a fantasy Chinatown threatened by gentrification.
Robert Apelian: In every way, haha! The core drama of the book is about what food means to each of the three Fustukian siblings, and what they each assumed it meant to their father. As diasporans, one of the major debates is about the food of their family — Hye food — vs. the food of their environment — Pars food — and having their choices and opinions reflect their own identity within the family and their culture. Everyone has different motivations for cooking too — for the kids, it’s a tie to their father, a skill they hone to seek recognition. But was it the same for their parents?
What’s your favorite thing about writing about food and family?
Robert Apelian: I’m an artist as much as a writer, and I think food is one of those things that’s perfectly suited to a visual medium. So I love being able to draw it and show it off. It’s also, to me, something so warm and full of love and passion, so depicting relationships and interactions through eating and cooking together really hits home for me. I’ve got no shortage of opinions about food OR family so the writing just flows so easily!
Shaina Lu: I like drawing food a lot!
What’s your least favorite thing about food?
Shaina Lu: I really don’t care for raisins and dried coconut. I will still eat them, though.
Robert Apelian: Hmm, tough one. Food is a unique artform in that it’s something everyone needs — which is a blessing and a curse. Everyone has food opinions, and I know some people have dark and difficult relationships with food, when it relates to body image, health, etc.
It also quickly gets ethically challenging — I love cooking with meat, but I can’t deny that the reality of farming it is . . . bleak. To say the least. I guess here’s hoping lab-grown meat works out, but in the meantime I try to at least not eat meat every day.
What misconceptions have you found people have about food?
Robert Apelian: Oh, there are so many. I think there are a lot of misconceptions around how to learn to cook, especially. I think most people learn specific recipes and follow them strictly — which is great if it works for you — but a lot of people find that boring and frustrating, and then write off cooking as ‘not for them.’ Which is a shame, because I really think everyone should have cooking as a hobby.
I think a more natural way to cook for me, and maybe for others, is to pick a type of cuisine, and its associated techniques, and learn that. Then you can mix-and-match different concepts with different ingredients! It’s more flexible, and I think it’s more fun that way. If you build out your pantry with a set of ingredients specific to a cuisine, you don’t have to go out and buy a bunch of really niche stuff every time you want to cook something new. Lately I’ve been into Sichuan cooking, so half of my cooking these days is watching Chef Wang Gang on Youtube, seeing something cool, and putting it in the back of my mind for when I’m at the grocery store and see loofah or something and go “Oh! I could make that thing!” I feel like a kid in a toy store, it’s great!
Shaina Lu: People sometimes talk about authenticity in food – they’re often on the search for the most “authentic” food. I feel like authenticity in food is a bit of a myth. I think that food just changes as people move around and develop new traditions. Whatever feels most true to you is probably like, whatever your first exposure to the food was.
Are there other media about food and family that have inspired your work?
Shaina Lu: Definitely! I’m a big fan of cooking reality shows (like Culinary Class Wars). There’s also a large treasure trove of really amazing manga about food and family. Some favorites:
- Dungeon Meshi by Ryoko Kui
- She Loves to Cook, She Loves to Eat by Sakaomi Yuzaki
- Yakitate! Japan by Takahashi Hashiguchi
Robert Apelian: Absolutely! The movie Eat Drink Man Woman was a huge inspiration as I was coming up with the structure of the book, I highly recommend it. I can’t think of a better example of a movie centered on family and food.
Also, the manga Delicious in Dungeon is one of my all-time-favorites. It’s more “found family” than traditional family, but it does such a good job realistically depicting the communal nature of eating and cooking, and the way that it contributes to a broader ecosystem. Also it’s just one of the most well-written fantasy manga out there, I can’t recommend it enough.
If you could recommend one other graphic novel about food and cooking to people who love your work, what would it be (and why)?
Robert Apelian: Aside from Delicious in Dungeon mentioned above, Rare Flavours by Ram V. and Filipe Andrade was so so good. I didn’t read it until after finishing Fustuk, but there are so many similarities it was shocking, haha.
As someone who felt like 304 pages was barely enough to tell the story I wanted to tell, I’m always amazed by Ram V.’s ability to tell a satisfying story in such a small package. It has so much to say about food and the way we interact with it.
Shaina Lu: You should read Robert’s new graphic novel!!!