Eating the Landscape Review

Betsey Walsh

Professor Santos

ENGL 102_037

15 March 2017

Evaluation of Eating the Landscape

            While reading “Eating the Landscape,” by Enrique Salmon, I learned a lot about not only his culture, but my own culture as well. What I mean by this is after I read this book, I decided to ask my parents about our culture when it comes to food. Eating the Landscape talks about Salmon and the stories American Indian farmers shared with him and what happens with the Indigenous culture of food, from the cultivation of crops to the preparation of meals.

            In the first chapter of the book, Salmon talks about his grandma and how he felt she knew “everything about the land and food” (1 Salmon). Also throughout this chapter, he learns more about his culture: Raramuri and the traditional knowledge about it. He learned about the different plants, the uses of them, and their place in their culture.

            Throughout the book Salmon follows a few indigenous Indian farmers who have held onto traditional farming techniques. While interviewing them and going to different farms in the United States, Salmon comes across a theme that stood out to me the most: emphasizing the respect of the relationship between humans and nature. What Salmon means by this is that in today’s society, most people do not know or do not seem to care where their food is coming from. They just assume that it is from a farm and that is all they need to know. But this is not right. Not only the people eating the food, but also the farmers growing the food should have a respect when it comes to nature. For example, when growing a crop, if someone were to pull on the crop before it was ready, it would be hard to take out of the ground. This could be taken as a way of the crop saying that it is not ready to be harvested, so the human should respect that and wait until the crop is ready for harvest.

            I would recommend this book to people who are interested in learning about Salmon’s story and maybe it will make the reader want to find out more about their family and their history and culture when it comes to food. I know personally after reading this, I want to know more about my family and their history and culture when it comes to Irish foods!