How one St. Louisan shares her Nigerian culture in ‘Jollof Rice with Grandma’

St. Louis is home to many cultures from around the world. And as the region welcomes more new Americans, there’s a greater desire to share stories and traditions about other places and one's own experiences.

Vanessa Okwuraiwe wrote “Jollof Rice with Grandma” to share her culture with others in the St. Louis area. The children’s book focuses on 6-year-old Ada, who learns to make a classic West African dish when her grandparents visit from Nigeria.

“[Nigeria] tends to have a lot of the one-sided stories of things always going wrong,” she said. “And for those children who are growing up either as Nigerian Americans or Nigerian Brits, I wanted them specifically to take pride in the positive stories and also have a more holistic idea of their origins.”

Okwuraiwe was born in the United Kingdom, went to school in Lagos, Nigeria, where her family is from, and eventually moved to St. Louis for work in the financial services industry. In all these places, jollof rice remained a staple in her kitchen, especially for parties. “Jollof rice is a very popular dish, not just in Nigeria, but in West Africa. So it's cooked by millions of people,” she said. “You can make it as plain or as diverse as you want it to be.”

As the population of St. Louis changes in number and in cultural backgrounds, the demand for specific ingredients to make signature dishes gets higher. Okwuraiwe shared with St. Louis on the Air that it is possible to get all the fixings to make jollof rice if you know where to look. “[In] a lot of the Asian supermarkets there are brilliant substitutes. I can get peppers that are close to the scotch bonnet,” she said. “It might not always taste the same, but you can get really close to it.”