A Growing Culture on food sovereignty

Seven books that changed my perspective

• 

  The Nutmeg’s Curse

  by Amitav Ghosh

  (non-fiction)

  Amitav Ghosh has an incredible way of being both scholarly and poetic in his weaving of history, literature and political theory. He uses the nutmeg here as a way to trace the entanglement of the fossil fuel trade, the COVID-19 pandemic, brutal colonial legacies and the climate crisis. Reading this book gave me the sensation of finally getting a full picture of what we are grappling with and how colonialism has seeped into every facet of our society.

• 

  Terras do Sem Fim (The Violent Land)

  by Jorge Amado

  (fiction)

  This 1943 novel chronicles the land struggles that shaped the cocoa-plantation society in southern Bahia, Brazil. Few books narrate so well the nuanced relationships of coronelismo, the patriarchal power structure inherited from Portuguese colonial times, in which powerful landowners not only used violence to exert control over governmental structures and establish their monocultures, but were also considered providers for and protectors of the poor, trapping them into forced dependency. Often considered to be one of Amado’s dearest books, this story is essential reading for anyone looking to understand the roots of the legacies of violence, deforestation and extraction today.

• 

  Open Veins of Latin America

  by Eduardo Galeano

  (non-fiction)

  Open Veins confronts how the region’s wealth was stolen – gold, silver, sugar, oil – while its people were left in poverty. It doesn’t hold back, calling out colonial powers, foreign corporations and local elites for centuries of extraction and violence. It is informative, angry, poetic and still painfully relevant.

• 

  The Conquest of Bread

  by Peter Kropotkin

  (non-fiction)

  Kropotkin insists that the first act of liberation is to secure bread for all through shared land, collective production and the dismantling of private property. Even though it was written more than a century ago, it made me realise that without control over our food systems, no revolution can endure for long, because hunger forces dependence on the very systems we seek to dismantle. This book changed the way I see revolution, reminding me that freedom starts with something as fundamental as food.

• 

  Crooked Plow

  by Itamar Vieira Junior

  (fiction)

  This triptych novel set in Bahia, Brazil, defies genres. Three generations after the abolition of slavery, this novel follows a Quilombola community (descendants of African slaves) and the story of twin sisters in the poorest region of Brazil.

  Both fantastical and realist, the heart of this story is the land and its people. There are sections that might feel disorienting. But let it surprise you!

• 

  The Mighty Red

  by Louise Erdrich

  (fiction)

  This was my first introduction to Erdrich, one of the most significant Native American writers of Turtle Island. The novel’s set in rural North Dakota where small-town gossip, a love triangle and family drama share the stage with the economic meltdown of 2008, the biodiversity crash driven by pesticides and collective grief. All within the setting of a ladies’ bookclub. I carried the book everywhere with me in case I had a chance to jump back in. It’s also hilarious!

• 

  Hospicing Modernity

  by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira

  (non-fiction)

  I hesitated putting this book here, not because I don’t think it warrants it, but because I think it needs to be read when you’re ready to receive it. It asks us, what does it mean to die a good death? Because the world as we know it is dying right now and there’s no getting out of it. A guide, invitation and an uncomfortable confrontation, it has changed me more than any other text I’ve read.