Kristina Silvia

Prof. Santos

English 102-037

12 March 2018

Eating the Landscape Book Review

Eating the Landscape by Enrique Salmon is a personal narrative about growing up in an indigenous family. He talks about his family, his community, and the food they ate. He looks further into food in his life verse food we eat today. He discusses farming and how young people are not taking on the responsibility of becoming farmers. Salmon also discusses traditions in his book. He talks about his own family traditions as well as traditions within his community. These traditions all seemed to be focused around food. From there Salmon further discussed his opinion of the food industry today.

I found that this book was difficult to read. The topics discussed were very important ones but I found that the way Salmon writes was hard to follow. This made it very hard to get myself to continue reading on after finishing a chapter or even a page. Although I did not enjoy reading the book I found that Salmon is very good at detailing and describing a memory. With every line, there were massive amounts of detail that made one feel as though they were there. This made the book a little more enjoyable. Another thing I liked about this book was the topics discussed. Before reading this book I knew very little about farming and the food industry today. Reading this book in class forced my classmates and myself to think more about these topics. We further went on to look at other sources. For example, we watched a PBS documentary on farmers in big cities. This documentary caused me to really think about agriculture in our nation and what I can do to help.

“Salmón’s call for a return to more traditional food practices in this wide-ranging and insightful book is especially timely.” Today’s agricultural field is decreasing in size with fewer farmers every year. This book is important and informative of this issue. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in indigenous life and the food industry. Reading this book gave me the knowledge that I did not have before. I think that anyone who has a hard time reading, like myself, might find it difficult to read this book, but I encourage everyone to read it entirely. I also recommend that after reading this book one should continue their research in the food industry in order to further understand this topic.  

Works Cited

“Eating the Landscape American Indian Stories of Food, Identity, and Resilience.” The University of Arizona, The University of Arizona Press, uapress.arizona.edu/book/eating-the-landscape.