Customer Reviews

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

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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.

In the early 1970's Studs Terkel traveled across the country interviewing people about their work, and eventually compiled the interviews into the book Working. In the early 2000's, Patricia Klindienst took a similar approach, traveling around the USA to interview ethnic gardeners, immigrants who maintain their cultural identity through their connection to the earth.

While The Earth Knows My Name will never be a musical, it is a marvellous testament to the importance of earth and water, seed and plant, and in sustaining not just our ethnic roots, but also our whole selves. Her words bring to life the feeling of warm sun on your back while you plant corn, or crisp autumn mornings harvesting beans. She lets you smell the scent of flowers, but also taste the flavor of language, in her profiles of 15 gardeners.

This book is well written, it is poignant, and it is gently honest, with the author's love of gardening, and sincere respect for her subjects masking the inevitable political undercurrents.

My only complaint is that there should have been more pictures - I craved a coffee-table presentation, with Klindienst's words matched to lush photographs.

But maybe the mind's eye is the better viewing choice. Buy the book, and decide for yourself. Better yet, buy the book, and plant a garden.

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.

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!

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 Punjabi garden in Fullerton, California. Had she stayed in her comfortable home in India, Ruhan would have enjoyed the many privileges of high economic status, but she would not have been free to garden - in her home culture, such work is considered beneath her. She learned about the wonder of growing things by collecting tenant farmers' rent for her physician father who worked abroad. In California she can, and does, grow everything she wants. Her South Asian American friends find it all very puzzling. Why would she want to get dirty? A visit to her recreated semi-tropical garden answers that question - she has her own private paradise, a quarter acre with over 50 fruits, vegetables, and herbs, including the centerpiece, a neem tree, one of only a few in North America. I gave a copy of this book to my South Asian friend Meenal, a newbie gardener, and recommended this particular chapter. When her parents recently went back for a visit to their native India, they asked Meenal what she might like them to bring back. Her answer: "Seeds!" So Ruhan already has already raised up a disciple. Perhaps one day Ruhan and Meenal will even trade their best seeds along with their stories, who knows?

The last of its eight chapters chronicles the wondrous story of Whit Davis, an 11th generation Connecticut farmer who has recently presented revered Indian white flint corn to the descendants of the Native Americans displaced by his colonial ancestors. Along with the seed corn, he sends the following instructions via the author, who is doing the actual presentation: "Tell them they should plant two, three fields of it and to keep them separated. After three, four years, they should take the best seed from all three and mix them together and start again. That way they keep the corn strong. Tell them that I wish them well. Tell them that I wish them good luck in all their endeavors." I gave a copy of this book is my nephew Neil, a PhD in eco-biology, now a plant biologist developing drought resistant corn, and directed him to Whit's story. Neil was astounded to read Whit's instructions, because they describe precisely the methodology he and his team utilize in their experimental fields.

We live in a time of keen interest in food politics and increasing ecological concern. One of the books strengths is its subtlety in these matters. The stories tell themselves, but they also enhance the reader's awareness of the need to support local farmers, preserve open space, and protect seed banks from corporate, monopolistic control. This book is suffused with deep and ancient wisdom. It is more than just an oral history book; it is a sacred text, helping us to relearn deep reverence and spiritual connection.

Considering how drawn in I was by Klindienst's work, it came as no surprise to me when I learned that she has won a 2007 American Book Award for The Earth Knows My Name. This prize highlights writing which expresses America's multicultural heritage. Just one suggestion: read the prologue after reading the main body of the book, at which point you will have fallen in love with all her subjects, and realize what an artful volume Patricia Klindienst has created. By then, reading her own story will make more sense. Another reading tip: there is a coherent order to the chapters, but each stands on its own, so no need to read them in sequence.

Warning: this book is powerful. Don't be surprised if, come spring, you find yourself planting a cottage garden....

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

I loved this book. I just wish I could get it back. It is so beautiful that my sister hasn't yet returned it, she just keeps rereading it. I wanted to write Patricia, thank her and plead with her to write the rest of the stories she collected. I could use two or three more of these books. She did such a beautiful job collecting the stories of people who don't feel part of the mainstream American culture, but rather part of the soil itself. Her writing is sensitive, lyrical and haunting. It sticks with you, uplifting you and helping you understand that you are not alone in your love of the land. Absolutely and perfectly beautiful.

My 85 year old mother, who is a small gardener, has been raving about this book since I gave it to her last July for a birthday gift. You need to realize that there are no color pictures of gardens in it, but the writing is exquisite and goes into family details from people who have attempted to recreate family gardens, that they once had in their countries of birth, here in the U.S.

This is an interesting, beautifully written book describing the connection between a culture and growing food, using specific individuals in different parts of America -- Native American, Hispanic, Japanese, Italian, and so on. Gardening breathes life into the culture and the person. It is an unusual, heartfelt theme.

This simple but profound book brought me back to my immigrant grandparents and their gardens. My father's father always said "Never plant anything you can't eat', and having known hunger on two continents grew tomatoes, beans and escarole of immense size and sweetness. My mother's mother, having fed her children from her garden, had turned to flowers by the time I knew her. Her yard was a joyous riot of color and fragrance with delicious places for small children to hide beneath the blooms.
The author reminds us that for so many people becoming an 'American' meant severing an intimate relationship with the Earth as our nourishing and sustaining source of life. We cover her with asphalt, grow acres of grass that demand fertilizer, water and constant attention yet gives nothing of substance in return. We abandoned our role as stewards and exploited with a reckless sense of entitlement.
I recommend this book to those who want to be reassured that the Earth is forgiving but it is now essential that we reconsider our relationship to consider first what she needs and deserves so we may continue to be nourished in body and spirit.