The Earth Knows My Name: Food, Culture, and Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic Americans

by Patricia Klindienst

Book Overview

A lyrical exploration of the power of gardens in transmitting culture, with a powerful message of hope for the future

Winner of an American Book Award for 2007

Patricia Klindienst crossed the country to write this book, inspired by a torn and faded photograph that shed new light on the story of her Italian immigrant family's struggle to adapt to America. She gathered the stories of urban, suburban, and rural gardens created...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807085715
• ISBN13: 9780807085714
• Release Date: April 2007
• Publisher: Beacon Press
• Length: 276 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

The Best Book of the Year

Last summer I received this book as a surprise gift from my son's partner. Its author is a like an aunt to her, and she thought I might enjoy it. I was very touched by this generous gesture and certainly hoped to like it; its vivid cover looked inviting and the topic intriguing, but my expectations were modest at best. Dutifully I delved into it - lo and behold, I didn't just like it. I loved it. The writing is lyrical, the stories are powerful. Its narratives, chronicling the experience of people bringing forth food from the earth, put this book squarely on the shelf with Kingsolver's Animal Vegetable Miracle and Pollon's Omnivore's Dilemma. English lacks a word for people who grow their own food while working a day job: hence the book's dissertation-length title, The Earth Knows My Name: Food, Culture, and Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic Americans. "Gardener" connotes flowers more than edibles; "farmer" and "grower" suggest fulltime professionals, and "subsistence farmer" conjures up hardscrabble sharecropping. Our closest term is kitchen or cottage gardeners. The author highlights eight gardens, each created and nurtured by people whose pleasure in growing things and deep reverence for the earth are powerfully and poetically expressed - especially captivating since few of them would be comfortable writing their observations and experiences. The reader feels privileged to sit in on the dialogue between author and subject - lush descriptions jump off each page, allowing us to see, smell, taste, and feel the bounty of these gardens. Each day's sequence of harvesting, preparing, preserving, and eating, along with endless garden tasks, including saving the best seeds for the next year's planting, come to life. Klindienst skillfully recreates the narratives of these gardeners speaking their truths and sharing their intimate knowledge of producing sustenance; their garden labors sustain them spiritually as well as physically. Most of them are immigrants who bridge their old homes and their new by connecting with the earth. Meet the Khmer growers of Western Massachusetts, aging immigrant survivors of genocide. Over time they have created a flourishing New England community garden featuring South Asian fruits and vegetables. In their garden these two sisters are at home, at peace. From early spring to late fall they are busy every minute nurturing both their plants and the younger family and community members who help out; their organic produce is in great demand by local fans and restaurants. When the harvest season ends, the garden's proceeds fund wat restorations and schools in their home village in Cambodia as well as new local Massachusetts Buddhist communities. When winter settles in their aches, traumas, and flashbacks reappear. Cooped up indoors all winter, they long for their garden, a surrogate for their past lives, only feeling hopeful again when spring revives their spirits. Visit with Klindienst in Ruhan Kainth's

A Garden Democracy

What a beautiful, wise, passionate and informed book. I guarantee you will want to discuss its ideas with your friends, and give copies to those you love most. And of course, if you don't have a garden, it will inspire you to start one. Or, if you don't have the space, to find a community garden. Or, if you don't have access even to a community garden, to start growing some herbs at home! I would like to share one short quote here, from the epilogue, entitled A Garden Democracy. There's a fellow in Connecticut called Whit Davis, the last surviving member of his Yankee clan, who recently made a gift of some original Indian seed corn to a local tribe. As a result this tribe have been able to finally start recreating the Indian gardens that the first English settlers came across and destroyed in short order. "How can a gesture as simple as the gift of seeds be a meaningful answer to centuries of injustice? Because it makes possible the restoration of the seed's place in a structure of meaning. The English imposed on "the garden of New England" the idea of land as commodity, the wilderness as a fund of natural capital at their disposal, and seed as a form of currency. Whit's return of the seeds refuses those meanings." Exactly. Through reading this book, and hopefully cultivating a piece of land yourself, you will come to understand that it's not just real estate, it's not just a commodity, it's Mother Earth. In other words, the Indians were right all along. Right up there with Michael Pollan, Aldo Leopold, Sir Albert Howard, Richard Evans Schultes, Paul Stamets, Jane Goodall, Masanobu Fukuoka, Carlo Petrini, Bill McKibben, Wendell Berry, Edward O. Wilson, and all the others who have drawn attention to the fact that our relationship to the earth is more than merely economic. Thank you Patricia!

I wanted more

I would have purchased this book even if I did not know some of the people and places in this book. Patricia's material and writing are inspirational not just for gardeners but for anyone who is interested in where their food originates. The diversity of the gardens and gardeners made me realize again, the necessity of supporting our local growers. My only complaint is that I wanted more and found myself rationing my chapters. Hopefully there will be a sequel to include the gardens she omitted. I strongly recommend this book. Makes a great gift.

Will interest not only gardeners, but any intrigued by immigrant history and cross-cultural encounte

THE EARTH KNOWS MY NAME: FOOD, CULTURE, AND SUSTAINABILITY IN THE GARDENS OF ETHNIC AMERICANS isn't just from a single gardener's perspective: master gardener Patricia Klindienst traveled across the country for three years to write this, gathering stories of urban and rural gardens from American gardeners whose immigrant roots reflect their gardening choices. Hers combines a history of how immigrant Americans grew food and transmitted cultural background in the process, with chapters blending their oral stories with such background. It's a wide-ranging title which will interest not only gardeners, but any intrigued by immigrant history and cross-cultural encounters. Diane C. Donovan California Bookwatch

A True Gem

This wonderful book will edify and inspire you. It is the individual stories of several gardeners from as many parts of the world who manage to communicate with the earth wherever they find themselves. Place a seed in fertile soil and predictable things happen no matter what your language or station in life. Through the stories of these hard-working, thoughtful people, we are reminded of what is truly important in life - family, community, our food and its source. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.