Book Review: The Earth Knows My Name: Food, Culture and Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic Americans, by Patricia Klindienst
Reviewed by Scott Vlaun

One of my earliest memories of my grandmother was to see her trudging up the small hill beside her garage, sweat on her brow, soil on her hands, and her dirty apron full of tomatoes, summer squash, and green beans. This fresh harvest from her “plantation,” tucked away in the back of her small urban lot, would become our lunch. Even though I can still remember the aroma of her tomato sauce and the steam rising off of bowls of colorful vegetables—completely antithetical to the processed food that my “thoroughly modern” mother served in the 60’s—the thing I remember most was that, even though tending her garden demanded a supreme effort (she was in her late 70’s), my grandmother was filled with joy.

It was nearly 30 years later, when I had the privilege of visiting the small island in the Caribbean where she grew up, that I began to understand how her little “plantation” connected her to her childhood home, where home vegetable gardens were an integral part of the fabric of island life. As an avid gardener myself now, I’m beginning to realize that my own joy with being in the garden, growing and savoring my own food, has its roots deep in my ancestral heritage.

That gardening can connect us deeply to our cultural roots and form a foundation for a joyful existence regardless of our physical location has perhaps never been articulated as well as Patricia Klindienst manages to do in The Earth Knows My Name. In a series of powerful and lyrical short narratives she profiles the lives of 15 gardeners, many of them exiles or refugees in one form or another, whether from the terror of Pol Pot’s Cambodia or the incessant pesticide exposure of industrial-scale agriculture.

These are gardeners and seed savers from Italy, Poland, Puerto Rico and India, as well as descendants of slaves on South Carolina’s Sea Islands, a Japanese-American that saw his entire family wrenched from their farm during WWII, descendants of the Spanish Conquistadors, and a Native American family resurrecting a thousand-year-old farming tradition. Perhaps the most compelling story is a reconciliation between an 11th generation Connecticut corn farmer and the native tribe whose land his forbearers violently appropriated centuries before.

Spread from coast to coast, in urban and rural settings, these are intrepid souls gardening in a cultural crossfire, yet grounded in their reverence for the earth and their sacred seeds and plants. Their labor is not only about creating abundance on the landscape and feeding themselves and their communities, but about the spiritual sustenance that comes with honoring age-old traditions and cultivating ancestral seeds.

The dialog between Klindienst and her subjects is richly infused with the fabric of their gardening experience and food traditions. She allows us a window into the experience of those outside of (and often invisible to) the mainstream culture who are at once steeped in tradition and on the cutting edge of the local foods movement. This is a book you will want to savor as you would a long, slow meal with friends, absorbing and reflecting on each flavor and experience while garnering a greater understanding of the cultural forces which shape our food future.

Scott Vlaun
Editor