Eduardo Santiago
Mostly cozy, but often felt forced or disjointed. The tone was not cohesive: some essays focused entirely on the sensory aspects of the titular food, some on intimate memories and associations, and some were a distant stretch. Frequent notes of antiracism and antiviolence woven in, all of them powerful and relevant; this bumped it from four stars to five.
One element I found notable, and has me super curious: food familiarity. The vast majority of these foods are ones I know and love, but I was astonished when reading the Kaong chapter at how disconnected I felt: that's a fruit I don't know and had never even heard of, and nothing she wrote gave me even the slightest sense of what it's like. That makes me wonder about Americans who've never tasted sugar cane or apple bananas (manzanos): what must those chapters be like? I also wondered, briefly, about non-foodies, people who don't salivate when reading about mangos pineapple vanilla cinnammmmmmmmon, and I guess this book is not for them.
Oh—the illustrations. Swoon.
Mostly cozy, but often felt forced or disjointed. The tone was not cohesive: some essays focused entirely on the sensory aspects of the titular food, some on intimate memories and associations, and some were a distant stretch. Frequent notes of antiracism and antiviolence woven in, all of them powerful and relevant; this bumped it from four stars to five.
One element I found notable, and has me super curious: food familiarity. The vast majority of these foods are ones I know and love, but I was astonished when reading the Kaong chapter at how disconnected I felt: that's a fruit I don't know and had never even heard of, and nothing she wrote gave me even the slightest sense of what it's like. That makes me wonder about Americans who've never tasted sugar cane or apple bananas (manzanos): what must those chapters be like? I also wondered, briefly, about non-foodies, people who don't salivate when reading about mangos pineapple vanilla cinnammmmmmmmon, and I guess this book is not for them.
Oh—the illustrations. Swoon.