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Feasting Wild: In Search of the Last Untamed Food
Two centuries ago, nearly half the North American diet was found in the wild. Today, so-called “wild foods” are becoming expensive commodities, served to the wealthy in top restaurants. In Feasting Wild, geographer and anthropologist Gina Rae La Cerva traces our relationship to wild foods and shows what we sacrifice when we domesticate them—including biodiversity, Indigenous knowledge, and an important connection to nature.
Along the way, she samples wild foods herself, sipping elusive bird’s nest soup in Borneo and smuggling Swedish moose meat home in her suitcase. Thoughtful, ambitious, and wide-ranging, Feasting Wild challenges us to take a closer look at the way we eat today.
Along the way, she samples wild foods herself, sipping elusive bird’s nest soup in Borneo and smuggling Swedish moose meat home in her suitcase. Thoughtful, ambitious, and wide-ranging, Feasting Wild challenges us to take a closer look at the way we eat today.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published May 26, 2020
About the author
Gina Rae La Cerva
3 books15 followersGina Rae La Cerva is a geographer, environmental anthropologist, and award-winning writer who has traveled extensively to research a variety of environmental and food-related topics. A National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow, La Cerva holds a Master of Environmental Science from Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and a Master of Philosophy from the University of Cambridge. Originally from New Mexico, she splits her time between Santa Fe and New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 93 reviews
June 27, 2020
Part memoir, geography and cultural anthropology, I had a mistaken expectation when i began reading. Thought this was going to be about foraging for wild food, and though there was some of that it became much more. How our food sources have changed, partly due to climate change and environmental changes, but also due to breed. She travels to different countries, talking, sampling food, interspersed with her current relationship and bits of her past.
My favorite part was right here on the east coast of the USA. She walks through a deserted and drinking Winchester factory and shows how the factory was used at one time and how nature has retaken much. What nature did and could not reclaim was the land the pilgrims found when they arrived, a land the American Indians had taken care of for hundreds of years. The plentiful birds, a skynfilked with carrier pigeons, twelve different types of ducks. So many wild turkeys. Many no longer in existence, we have not been good caretakers of our home.
The Congo was heartbreaking. Bush meat and poaching a way of life. No easy answers, trying to balance conservation with the need of people to eat and of course the trees of other countries who pay top dollar for parts of the animals and the bush meat. Some tough reading there.
A valuable book showing us how damaging we have been, how the animals, and other forms of wildlife have suffered or been wiped out completely.
ARC from Edelweiss.
My favorite part was right here on the east coast of the USA. She walks through a deserted and drinking Winchester factory and shows how the factory was used at one time and how nature has retaken much. What nature did and could not reclaim was the land the pilgrims found when they arrived, a land the American Indians had taken care of for hundreds of years. The plentiful birds, a skynfilked with carrier pigeons, twelve different types of ducks. So many wild turkeys. Many no longer in existence, we have not been good caretakers of our home.
The Congo was heartbreaking. Bush meat and poaching a way of life. No easy answers, trying to balance conservation with the need of people to eat and of course the trees of other countries who pay top dollar for parts of the animals and the bush meat. Some tough reading there.
A valuable book showing us how damaging we have been, how the animals, and other forms of wildlife have suffered or been wiped out completely.
ARC from Edelweiss.
June 12, 2020
I purchased "Feasting Wild" after reading the reviews, and I was chomping at the bit to read. To say this book was an utter disappointment is an understatement. Each chapter contains 4 to 6 paragraphs total of solid knowledge linking current culinary awareness to ecological and historical contexts. The author inserts her own upbringing into the conversation, which does give the text a certain richness. However each chapter, and the 4 to 6 paragraphs, loses its effect. The author punctuates each chapter with an on going anecdotes about her dating habits. The terminus of each chapter leaves the reader feeling like an underpaid production assistant having to watch audition tapes for the next Real Housewives season. It is unfortunate that a work so promising ended up reading like a TMZ blog. Sad for the communities the book was purporting to help.
February 28, 2020
Had the privilege of blurbing this forthcoming book; here's what I wrote: "Feasting Wild is a rich literary banquet, its pages a smorgasbord of intrepid travelogue, unflinching memoir, and keen ecological history. Where the worldviews of Cheryl Strayed and Michael Pollan converge, you’ll find this perceptive, big-hearted, beautifully crafted book."
October 15, 2020
A beautiful cover and an interesting titles that under-delivered for me. I was expecting a book about endangered and obscure plants and animals and got a travelogue mostly about flying around the planet to snack on exotic meats and to have crushes on "hunters."
June 22, 2020
I think this book could have been been really good, it had a lot of potential. But it felt like the personal aspects of the main characters story, especially the love story, overwhelmed what I assumed what suppose to be the focal point, telling us about wild food and the environmental and anthropological angles of eating wild food. While there was still some of that, it wasn't enough and definitely felt like an add-on to me.
August 7, 2020
I wanted to like this much more but the way that the author writes about her Congolese interview subjects is off-putting in a way that is difficult to pin down and the subplot of her romance with a much older Swedish big game hunter only worsens that feeling. It’s unfortunate because I did find the book informative and challenged many of my pre-conceptions.
May 25, 2020
What a delectable read!
Geographer and environmental anthropologist Gina Rae La Verva has written a most interesting look at our relationship with wild foods and how it has changed and the effects of this change on our world. Delving into the past all the way to the present she explores the evolution of that relationship. What was once the way of life for humans, eating off the land, hunting and gathering into the present where certain wild foods have now become expensive commodities. She also talks about women and Indigenous cultures roles, their knowledge of wild foods and properties throughout history, as well as the delicacies different countries and cultures enjoy. Some of my favorite parts were where she shared of her own travel adventures and stories of experiencing wild foods herself.
•
This book was so facinating! It really makes you think of how we especially in western countries treat, produce, and eat food now compared to the ways our ancestors did and even other parts of the world do today. I learned so much! You can tell the author put in a lot of research and has an extensive background knowledge and love of foods.
•
If you enjoy food writing, memoir, nature and travelogue writing this book is definitely for you. It will be available in the US May 26th and Canada June 2nd.
•
Thank You to the publisher for sending me this book opinions are my own.
•
For more of my book content check out instagram.com/bookalong
Geographer and environmental anthropologist Gina Rae La Verva has written a most interesting look at our relationship with wild foods and how it has changed and the effects of this change on our world. Delving into the past all the way to the present she explores the evolution of that relationship. What was once the way of life for humans, eating off the land, hunting and gathering into the present where certain wild foods have now become expensive commodities. She also talks about women and Indigenous cultures roles, their knowledge of wild foods and properties throughout history, as well as the delicacies different countries and cultures enjoy. Some of my favorite parts were where she shared of her own travel adventures and stories of experiencing wild foods herself.
•
This book was so facinating! It really makes you think of how we especially in western countries treat, produce, and eat food now compared to the ways our ancestors did and even other parts of the world do today. I learned so much! You can tell the author put in a lot of research and has an extensive background knowledge and love of foods.
•
If you enjoy food writing, memoir, nature and travelogue writing this book is definitely for you. It will be available in the US May 26th and Canada June 2nd.
•
Thank You to the publisher for sending me this book opinions are my own.
•
For more of my book content check out instagram.com/bookalong
August 2, 2020
The author of this book is a geographer and anthropologist and readers will definitely see how these disciplines influence her outlook and her writing. I was expecting a mostly scientific style. However, I was surprised by the almost lyrical aspects to her writing.
It started with the titles: The Prologue's title is "Heartbreak Moose." Looking at the table of contents you'll notice that each part has a title that walks a fine line between anthropology and poetry: Part 1 is "On Memory and Forgetting;" Part 2 is "Subjects of Desire;" and Part 3 is "Seasons of Feast and Famine"
The heart of the book can be found at the end of the prologue:
"The thing about wild food-unlike domesticated food-is that it has a story. I want to tell you the story of my Heartbreak Moose."
"Isn't that a long story?" a friend who's heard it before interrupts.
"Then I will begin in the middle," I reply.
You cannot say you weren't warned, fellow readers. These stories are long because as an anthropologist the author knows that humans are the storytelling animals. So sit back and enjoy story, after story, after story.
It started with the titles: The Prologue's title is "Heartbreak Moose." Looking at the table of contents you'll notice that each part has a title that walks a fine line between anthropology and poetry: Part 1 is "On Memory and Forgetting;" Part 2 is "Subjects of Desire;" and Part 3 is "Seasons of Feast and Famine"
The heart of the book can be found at the end of the prologue:
"The thing about wild food-unlike domesticated food-is that it has a story. I want to tell you the story of my Heartbreak Moose."
"Isn't that a long story?" a friend who's heard it before interrupts.
"Then I will begin in the middle," I reply.
You cannot say you weren't warned, fellow readers. These stories are long because as an anthropologist the author knows that humans are the storytelling animals. So sit back and enjoy story, after story, after story.
November 14, 2020
Is it acceptable to illegally smuggle meat in your suitcase because you studied at Yale?
The author sounds like a pompous ass.
And that was before she felt the need to mention she was hungover in her driver's license photo because she met Bill Murray the night before. What does that have to do with foraging for food?
The author sounds like a pompous ass.
And that was before she felt the need to mention she was hungover in her driver's license photo because she met Bill Murray the night before. What does that have to do with foraging for food?
January 24, 2021
Afgaand op de blurb en de auteur had ik dit boek veel wetenschappelijker ingeschat dan het daadwerkelijk is. Per hoofdstuk heb je misschien 1 of 2 pagina’s informatie en de rest is algemene beschrijvingen over reizen en haar liefdesleven? Thanks maar echt niet interessant, ik lees liever meer over hoe zonder reuzeschildpadden als voedselbron er geen transatlantische slavenhandel had kunnen zijn.
November 15, 2021
The book is extremely well-written and even poetic at times. The first third exceeded expectations. It was riveting and informative. As to the latter part of the book, I have mixed feelings. I thoroughly enjoy non-fiction books which inject the author's personality in a conversational tone. I feel it warms the subject up and helps make it feel more like a story and less like an academic paper. However, this one seemed to lose focus on the overall purpose of the book while getting lost in the personal narrative. I'm not saying that is a bad thing, more that the reader was unprepared for the shift. Once you settled in to the change from culinary historical non-fiction to more observant travel journal the book picked up again. Overall, an enjoyable read.
December 17, 2020
It was okay, nothing too special.
I would recommend reading Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures instead.
2.7/5
I would recommend reading Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures instead.
2.7/5
November 24, 2021
I started reading Feasting Wild: In Search of the Last Untamed Food because I thought it might work for a challenge with Thanksgiving and while it may talk turkey, it does go well beyond the idea of a feast. You see Gina Rae La Cerva is an environmental anthropologist who really knows her field and she guides us on a journey to discover how not only our eating habits have changed but that they have changed the world in unforeseen ways.
She begins her journey at Noma, the world famous restaurant and ventures out on a foraging expedition with the chefs to a local graveyard. She says:
"So many edible species and varietals have vanished to standardization, uniformity, and predictable tastes. It is easy to feel as though we are lacking some vital nourishment."
Now foraging is considered avant-garde and a highbrow and high dollar, what can we find that is truly wild? So her quest begins. She states:
"Wildness was once a stand-in for the unknowable, for a kind of nature that could never be entirely understood or controlled. But as settler-colonialism spread across the globe, “wildness” took on negative connotations and was used to justify violent appetites and the domination of unfamiliar cultures and places. The idea that Wild Nature was separate from Tame Culture took hold, and our ecosystems became increasingly cultivated. In just a few centuries, the world traded wild edibles at home for exotic domesticates from abroad."
Our journey in search of the wild edibles takes us across a vast journey of time and space, from Poland to Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to Malaysia. We learn about eating habits of the early hunter-gatherers, medieval times, precolonial America, the Buccaneers of the Caribbean among others. It is an eye opening tale told in an insightful way.
Along the way on her journey she falls in love and this, my friends, could be a book in itself. Part of me wishes it was.
I hope that if this interests you at all, you pick it up and read it.
She begins her journey at Noma, the world famous restaurant and ventures out on a foraging expedition with the chefs to a local graveyard. She says:
"So many edible species and varietals have vanished to standardization, uniformity, and predictable tastes. It is easy to feel as though we are lacking some vital nourishment."
Now foraging is considered avant-garde and a highbrow and high dollar, what can we find that is truly wild? So her quest begins. She states:
"Wildness was once a stand-in for the unknowable, for a kind of nature that could never be entirely understood or controlled. But as settler-colonialism spread across the globe, “wildness” took on negative connotations and was used to justify violent appetites and the domination of unfamiliar cultures and places. The idea that Wild Nature was separate from Tame Culture took hold, and our ecosystems became increasingly cultivated. In just a few centuries, the world traded wild edibles at home for exotic domesticates from abroad."
Our journey in search of the wild edibles takes us across a vast journey of time and space, from Poland to Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to Malaysia. We learn about eating habits of the early hunter-gatherers, medieval times, precolonial America, the Buccaneers of the Caribbean among others. It is an eye opening tale told in an insightful way.
Along the way on her journey she falls in love and this, my friends, could be a book in itself. Part of me wishes it was.
I hope that if this interests you at all, you pick it up and read it.
December 7, 2020
Wow! This was not at all what I was expecting. I might have found one of my favorite author. Feasting Wild is, indeed, a search for wild food. The author travels around the world to learn about the history and disappearance of some wild foods, the landscapes to which they belong and the traditions surrounding them. But even though this book is non fiction, it's almost an hybrid as the author embedded so much of her life and feelings. She writes so beautifully that it's also almost like poetry. Another good point is that she made an effort to not recount history from a colonial viewpoint, which is rare.
It made me think of "Braiding Sweetgrass" by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
All in all, an excellent book.
It made me think of "Braiding Sweetgrass" by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
All in all, an excellent book.
November 8, 2022
Really enjoyed Parts One and Three of this (3-part) book. The first part of the book was truly exciting and fun to read. The action in the first third of the book is mostly set in Copenhagen where the author visits René Redzepi's iconic restaurant, Noma, as well as other Danish sites of interest to a wild food enthusiast. As the author encounters a range of visitors to this gastronomic mecca she quickly reveals her true project. She is not there to worship at the altar of Rene Redzepi. Instead she is there to interrogate the rise of such a temple to wild foods and its mystical hold over the food landscape for the last decade (if not longer, Noma opened in 2003). In doing so La Cerva articulates and contextualizes the re-emergence of our cultural fascination with wild foods. Her observations, interviews, and research are a real tonic to how romanticized the consumption of wildness is and has been throughout much of modern history. She explores and unpacks why some approaches, to the recent/current enthusiasm for foraging, preparing, and/or eating wild foods are often problematic (also entirely applicable to the vogue for homesteading, wildcrafting, and other "back-to-nature" pursuits). La Cerva intersperses her passionate, knowledgeable probe on this phenomenon with a range of fascinating accounts collected from a mix of sources, some personal, some historic, and some street level encounters.
Part Two in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is a somewhat interesting look at bush meat traditions (there are some issues of privilege with how she writes about some Congolese citizens) but the tragedy is that here the book gets hijacked by an extended account of her romance with some hunky Swedish conservationist whom she dubs "The Hunter."
Part Three is primarily set in Malaysia where she investigates the demand and industry surrounding edible bird's nests (EBN) and then continues with a trip to Sweden where she goes moose hunting. There is much insight in both the Malaysian and Swedish legs of this book but The Hunter continues to make appearances throughout and, personally, he is not a welcome presence in an otherwise interesting and superb exploration into how we currently understand wild foods and wildness as a concept.
Rounding up from 3.5 stars to 4 because I still really appreciate and enjoyed so much of this book. I just wish everything about The Hunter could be replaced with additional wild-food-pertinent material. See my highlights and notes for more info.
Part Two in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is a somewhat interesting look at bush meat traditions (there are some issues of privilege with how she writes about some Congolese citizens) but the tragedy is that here the book gets hijacked by an extended account of her romance with some hunky Swedish conservationist whom she dubs "The Hunter."
Part Three is primarily set in Malaysia where she investigates the demand and industry surrounding edible bird's nests (EBN) and then continues with a trip to Sweden where she goes moose hunting. There is much insight in both the Malaysian and Swedish legs of this book but The Hunter continues to make appearances throughout and, personally, he is not a welcome presence in an otherwise interesting and superb exploration into how we currently understand wild foods and wildness as a concept.
Rounding up from 3.5 stars to 4 because I still really appreciate and enjoyed so much of this book. I just wish everything about The Hunter could be replaced with additional wild-food-pertinent material. See my highlights and notes for more info.
May 6, 2021
I liked the overall theme of the book and the discussion about food's role in our lives and culture. But, the book suffered from 2 huge flaws that I can't overlook. They both damaged the author's integrity in their own ways.
(1) The citations leave a lot to be desired, and seem to peter out the further you get into the book. The author makes big and interesting statements about environmental degradation or wild crop harvesting, and it's unclear where she got that information. Is it her own research? Is it related to the citation five paragraphs later? I never knew what information to trust and where it came from.
(2) The Hunter. Good lord. Shut up about the Hunter. I get it - he's hot and he's a metaphor. You're thirsty and miss your slam piece, but shut up about it. About half way through the book, the author introduces the Hunter and from that point, the book seriously suffers and is much weaker. The author has to constantly bring you back the Hunter and it's jarring. She'll be discussing Bird's Nest Soup, the history, and the ecological impacts and then suddenly - I haven't seen the Hunter in months. I think about him often. Does he think about me? He told me no news is good news, etc. chapter later, she'll be reminiscing about her childhood and she circles back to the Hunter. She talks about Polish ancients forests - and has to mention the Hunter. It's constant and without purpose or merit. By the end of the book, I was groaning and skipping entire pages when I saw "Hunter" pop up in my peripheral vision.
(1) The citations leave a lot to be desired, and seem to peter out the further you get into the book. The author makes big and interesting statements about environmental degradation or wild crop harvesting, and it's unclear where she got that information. Is it her own research? Is it related to the citation five paragraphs later? I never knew what information to trust and where it came from.
(2) The Hunter. Good lord. Shut up about the Hunter. I get it - he's hot and he's a metaphor. You're thirsty and miss your slam piece, but shut up about it. About half way through the book, the author introduces the Hunter and from that point, the book seriously suffers and is much weaker. The author has to constantly bring you back the Hunter and it's jarring. She'll be discussing Bird's Nest Soup, the history, and the ecological impacts and then suddenly - I haven't seen the Hunter in months. I think about him often. Does he think about me? He told me no news is good news, etc. chapter later, she'll be reminiscing about her childhood and she circles back to the Hunter. She talks about Polish ancients forests - and has to mention the Hunter. It's constant and without purpose or merit. By the end of the book, I was groaning and skipping entire pages when I saw "Hunter" pop up in my peripheral vision.
August 31, 2020
Started reading this book thinking it would be more, well...informative than it was. There's some decent writing in here but overall this book is much more memoir, (boring) love story, travel log, and self reflection than I personally have an interest in. Also heavily focused on game animals and hunting.
November 11, 2020
The book became less about food and more about the authors love affair in Africa. I wanted this so much to be like a wild, literary version of Chef’s Table but was consistently pretty bored.
November 16, 2020
“Perhaps the frontiers were imaginary the whole time, phantoms we chased to mark the measure of our wandering. Perhaps, in the end, I know nothing.”
These are pretty damning words with which to sum up her journey.
You mean, I read your book and now you’re admitting you — and by extension me — learned nothing?
In Feasting Wild: In Search of the Last Untamed Food, author Gina Rae La Cerva takes us to a variety of frontiers including the frontiers of what we consider edible, the frontiers of civilization, the frontiers of the climate crisis, the frontiers of emotion, and to some degree the frontiers of knowledge.
There’s something thrilling about pulling your fresh meat and mushrooms from the wild, and sticking to our supermarkets our taste buds have been somewhat dulled.
However popular the traffic in African bushmeat and Asian bird nests (made from the spit of the bird — I kid you not), this business is bad news.
This book is to a large degree a love-letter to the animal kingdom disappearing before our eyes as we rapidly destroy the biodiversity of the planet.
Our impact on the planet is courting a 6th extinction, as Elizabeth Kolbert so wisely warned us. But we are exacerbating the situation with our trapping and consuming the last wild creatures on the planet and in the oceans.
The human destruction for La Cerva, however, is built upon ambiguity.
On the one hand she mourns the ever-declining numbers of large mammals, such as monkeys, gorillas, elephants, and amphibians being literally consumed by us to oblivion.
And there is a coda on the buffalo which, I learned, was extinguished from the frontiers of Eastern Europe much as it had been hunted to extinction across the Prairies.
But at the same time she waxes equally sentimental about the death of communal events like the hunt of large game in our manufactured futures. We now kill on an industrial level. We kill what is natural and we kill to feed billions of souls.
To complicate things further, during her travels La Cerva falls in love with one of her subjects, a man tasked with arresting poachers in the wilds of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and yet who in defines himself in the hunting of big game in his native Sweden.
She is at once appalled by the destruction of the large animals and fatally attracted to the hunter, attracted by his authenticity, much as she is attracted to the Congolese women themselves victims and disciplined participants in the traffic for bushmeat, a generic term for whatever is edible under the sun.
(This is one of those books where you wish Anthony Bourdain was sitting next to you to tell you what’s ok what’s not such a good idea.)
La Cerva seems to eat everything. She eats to understand the new fad of foraging cuisine, she eats to understand the mindset of the locals, she eats to recover the experiences of her youth, and sometimes she eats because that’s all that’s on the plate and she’s hungry.
There are vertebrates and invertebrates. There are bugs and worms and more monkeys than I knew existed. There are foods in various states of decomposition.
The story is also framed by the experiences of her Jewish grandmother, a forager in her own right as an orphaned refugee of Nazi aggression.
As a reader I was introduced to many, many new words of flora and fauna and I always appreciate a writer who takes me to the frontiers of the English language.
Contrary to her musings, La Cerva, does not know nothing at the end of her journeys. She may have lost her innocence and came to understand the nuance of the commercialization of bushmeat in Africa, but she and we are eminently more wise about the subject.
And this is critical to how we deal with the future.
Richard Attenborough has wisely counselled us to end the killing. There clearly is an alternative. And if we cannot return to the halcyon days before the industrial revolution, we must stop the wanton destruction of the oceans and the plains, and the forests.
These are pretty damning words with which to sum up her journey.
You mean, I read your book and now you’re admitting you — and by extension me — learned nothing?
In Feasting Wild: In Search of the Last Untamed Food, author Gina Rae La Cerva takes us to a variety of frontiers including the frontiers of what we consider edible, the frontiers of civilization, the frontiers of the climate crisis, the frontiers of emotion, and to some degree the frontiers of knowledge.
There’s something thrilling about pulling your fresh meat and mushrooms from the wild, and sticking to our supermarkets our taste buds have been somewhat dulled.
However popular the traffic in African bushmeat and Asian bird nests (made from the spit of the bird — I kid you not), this business is bad news.
This book is to a large degree a love-letter to the animal kingdom disappearing before our eyes as we rapidly destroy the biodiversity of the planet.
Our impact on the planet is courting a 6th extinction, as Elizabeth Kolbert so wisely warned us. But we are exacerbating the situation with our trapping and consuming the last wild creatures on the planet and in the oceans.
The human destruction for La Cerva, however, is built upon ambiguity.
On the one hand she mourns the ever-declining numbers of large mammals, such as monkeys, gorillas, elephants, and amphibians being literally consumed by us to oblivion.
And there is a coda on the buffalo which, I learned, was extinguished from the frontiers of Eastern Europe much as it had been hunted to extinction across the Prairies.
But at the same time she waxes equally sentimental about the death of communal events like the hunt of large game in our manufactured futures. We now kill on an industrial level. We kill what is natural and we kill to feed billions of souls.
To complicate things further, during her travels La Cerva falls in love with one of her subjects, a man tasked with arresting poachers in the wilds of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and yet who in defines himself in the hunting of big game in his native Sweden.
She is at once appalled by the destruction of the large animals and fatally attracted to the hunter, attracted by his authenticity, much as she is attracted to the Congolese women themselves victims and disciplined participants in the traffic for bushmeat, a generic term for whatever is edible under the sun.
(This is one of those books where you wish Anthony Bourdain was sitting next to you to tell you what’s ok what’s not such a good idea.)
La Cerva seems to eat everything. She eats to understand the new fad of foraging cuisine, she eats to understand the mindset of the locals, she eats to recover the experiences of her youth, and sometimes she eats because that’s all that’s on the plate and she’s hungry.
There are vertebrates and invertebrates. There are bugs and worms and more monkeys than I knew existed. There are foods in various states of decomposition.
The story is also framed by the experiences of her Jewish grandmother, a forager in her own right as an orphaned refugee of Nazi aggression.
As a reader I was introduced to many, many new words of flora and fauna and I always appreciate a writer who takes me to the frontiers of the English language.
Contrary to her musings, La Cerva, does not know nothing at the end of her journeys. She may have lost her innocence and came to understand the nuance of the commercialization of bushmeat in Africa, but she and we are eminently more wise about the subject.
And this is critical to how we deal with the future.
Richard Attenborough has wisely counselled us to end the killing. There clearly is an alternative. And if we cannot return to the halcyon days before the industrial revolution, we must stop the wanton destruction of the oceans and the plains, and the forests.
March 17, 2021
Reading this during the pandemic was a treat. GRC’s writing is descriptive and insightful but is at its strongest when she describes the moment she lands somewhere new, the sights, smells, sounds, and of course, food and fauna. This book is probably the most traveling I will do this year. In particular, the chapter on Kinshasa and her time in the surrounding jungle/conservations transported me—mostly because it’s not a place I have traveled to but also because GRC does not shy away from otherness when writing about the place. Throughout this book, GRC makes is it clear that she is a nonwhite woman, with formative environmental memories in New Mexico, traveling and inhabiting spaces that have also been othered. However, it’s not just people that have been othered; GRC looks at the landscape, vegetation, animals, “biodiversity”, cultures, and practices that have been othered. This lens magnifies the devastation but also the loss and grief that our collective habits and consumerism have wrecked upon the environment. GRC does not provide a “solution” but I do not think that’s the point of this book. GRC often focused on the individual action but then zooms out to connect to the industries and customs and sometimes, cultures, that also exist. Sometimes it feels like unstoppable game of which came first, the chicken or the egg? This book does the hard work of identifying a “problem” and then painstakingly explaining why this problem is inextricably linked to our idea of home and sense of belonging in a place.
Given how important traveling is to GRC, I hope she’s doing alright during this time. Also, the romance is this book is top notch.
Given how important traveling is to GRC, I hope she’s doing alright during this time. Also, the romance is this book is top notch.
May 13, 2021
The first third of the book is gold. It's great. Then an overly poetic love story gets woven in, but otherwise it's still quite good. The last 3rd or so is just overly sappy love story that towards the end she tries to make interwoven into the main part of the book, but fails. The last 3rd would be better even with the soap opera, but it's like she stopped caring about the purpose of the book and was just phoning in the non-love story part of it. So disappointing and a real shame seeing that a lot of what she talks about is important about nature, history, culture, politics, etc. It could have been such an excellent book.
April 19, 2022
La Cerva has managed to balance a documentarian storytelling sequence in the places and people she visits with personal anecdotes, histories and lessons. Her pilgrimage to research wild foods in specific places around the globe that are not thinking of the greater planets cost can easily come with bias or judgement in perspective, but she does not extort information or exploit behaviors around it, which is a refreshing experience, even if the ethics and morals are corrupt or illegal. Rather, she paints the pictures of the why and how people forage, hunt and sell wild food, and she does it with an open heart. This is a pilgrimage to become savvy in the wild
April 17, 2021
This isn’t what I expected. It’s an American gal traveling around the world looking at what people use to eat or eat as part of historical diets. But it’s also got a romance with a hunter, danger and complex feelings around diet and culture and “progress”. And even with all that, for me it lacked any excited or enthusiasm, things felt very ho-hum. Like so many books like this it is almost more memoir of the author than book about the topic. Overall, worth reading but did fall a bit flat for me.
February 14, 2023
an interesting look at lost species, wild places, and the idea of foraged food as a luxury. La Cerva writes about the important roles of women that have been forgotten throughout history, but in such a subtle way that you feel like you already knew these things and are being reminded. really enjoyed the authors writing style, and found that she described feelings in an incredibly accurate way. docked down a star since there are portions that are pedantic and dense about history that could be cut down. i especially liked the surprise plot point (idk if that’s the right term since it’s non fiction) of love it was very sweet and relatable. i would highly recommend!
June 19, 2020
Unnecessarily flowery and poetic language throughout and an odd love story woven in is what kept this from being a 5. Also made it longer than it needed to be.
March 29, 2021
A great example of what creative nonfiction can do, the book is written in as a narrative braid with personal memoir written in an impressionistic style woven into to academic, funded research (anthropology?) and travel. The topic is interesting but like so many reviewers, the book ultimately didn't work for me. And it didn't work in the more serious academic narrative portions. It started off without a strong framework of why she was engaged in this study. There was no working hypothesis or rationale informing the work so from the first chapter I had a bad impression about her flying all over the world and conducting interviews without a clear focus. I assume to receive funding she should have had a focus to the research. And it lacked rigor--not just because there was this overemphasis on the romantic aspect... she meets "the hunter" and she described her inevitable attraction to him after meeting him in the Congo, but it was off-putting. Maybe because it feels almost romance novelish, researcher falls for Swedish guy in the Congo while she is researching...?
This is from the review in the Wall Street Journal and I think it sums the situation up:
The DRC allows Ms. La Cerva another glimpse into the wild life, in the form of a Ramones-T-shirt-and-leopard-tooth-necklace-wearing, motorcycle-wheeling, antipoaching conservationist she calls the Hunter. Together, they make a pair of “lovely and tormented beasts,” she writes—wild lovers, one might say. Their affair, inevitably doomed, soon takes center stage. They separate, pine from afar through text messages and, reunited in his native Sweden, hunt a moose. This book would have been all the better had Ms. La Cerva followed her instincts to write more on the marketwomen of Kinshasa and less on the hunky Hunter.
I agreed. Also, instead of a push back against corporatized food and industrial agricultural practices which have caused untold suffering to animals and to soil health, she is chasing after wild foods, for reasons that are not clear. Especially given the virus-wet market- illegal trade network, she might have treaded a bit more cautiously.
On page 146, we get as close to a thesis as the book has to offer and it arrives in the words of "the hunky hunter"
When you are poor, you covet the goods of civilization. When you are rich, you have met your needs, you covete the goods of nature. He smiles goofily, as if he has just summed up my research and there is really very little need for me to keep conducting it, so we may as well talk about other things. Very true. I smile. This is what interest me about wild food. Eating it is an act of nostalgia, for both the natural abundance and the material poverty of the past. It’s like we want to re-experience a time when being human meant different something different than it does today, but with the benefit of being able to escape back into the comforts of domesticated civilization whenever we like.
These ideas are never fleshed out. That is a shame.
Winifred Bird has written a gorgeous book on wild-crafted foods in Japan that is deeply respectful to Japan and its culture and she explores moral issues around food very well. I also really liked the seaweed chronicles by wildlife writer Susan Shetterly.
This is from the review in the Wall Street Journal and I think it sums the situation up:
The DRC allows Ms. La Cerva another glimpse into the wild life, in the form of a Ramones-T-shirt-and-leopard-tooth-necklace-wearing, motorcycle-wheeling, antipoaching conservationist she calls the Hunter. Together, they make a pair of “lovely and tormented beasts,” she writes—wild lovers, one might say. Their affair, inevitably doomed, soon takes center stage. They separate, pine from afar through text messages and, reunited in his native Sweden, hunt a moose. This book would have been all the better had Ms. La Cerva followed her instincts to write more on the marketwomen of Kinshasa and less on the hunky Hunter.
I agreed. Also, instead of a push back against corporatized food and industrial agricultural practices which have caused untold suffering to animals and to soil health, she is chasing after wild foods, for reasons that are not clear. Especially given the virus-wet market- illegal trade network, she might have treaded a bit more cautiously.
On page 146, we get as close to a thesis as the book has to offer and it arrives in the words of "the hunky hunter"
When you are poor, you covet the goods of civilization. When you are rich, you have met your needs, you covete the goods of nature. He smiles goofily, as if he has just summed up my research and there is really very little need for me to keep conducting it, so we may as well talk about other things. Very true. I smile. This is what interest me about wild food. Eating it is an act of nostalgia, for both the natural abundance and the material poverty of the past. It’s like we want to re-experience a time when being human meant different something different than it does today, but with the benefit of being able to escape back into the comforts of domesticated civilization whenever we like.
These ideas are never fleshed out. That is a shame.
Winifred Bird has written a gorgeous book on wild-crafted foods in Japan that is deeply respectful to Japan and its culture and she explores moral issues around food very well. I also really liked the seaweed chronicles by wildlife writer Susan Shetterly.
February 7, 2022
A troubling, captivating read about mankind eating everything in Earth's pantry.
How did the book make me feel/think?
A troubling, captivating read about mankind eating everything in Earth's pantry.
How did the book make me feel/think?
TROUBLED. CAPTIVATED. BREATHLESS.
Feasting Wild troubled me.
It is an eloquently written story about the history of humanity through the consumption of food.
It is a love story.
It is a beautiful, evocative, eye-opening, thought-provoking, genre-changing gem.
As much as Feasting Wild is about food, it’s not. It deftly delves into societal issues plaguing society today—basically, the disease of ism: Racism + Capitalism. The prose sings in perfect harmony. “Athena’s voice is husky and scratched by cigarettes.”
The book delves deeply into the evolution of humanity, from hunter-gather to consumer, from how a food source jumps from peasant food needed to survival to scarcity, and often extinct when the wealthy members of society determine it to be a delicacy.
As I turned the pages, my appetite shrunk. I realized humanity is parasitic. But, unlike the unsuspecting creatures that are forced into extinction because they consume everything they need for survival, man consuming everything in his path devastates their habitats, resulting in destroyed ecological environs and altering the destiny of all living beings until…?
The difference between man and beast is beast acts instinctively. Whereas a man can see the destruction he’s creating, since our lifespans are minute, we kind of don’t care. But, oh yeah, and we created weapons, and to the animal world, they are weapons of mass destruction.
Feasting Wild troubled me because it made me aware that we are desperately flawed despite all the brilliance of humanity. The consumptive model of capitalism has no brakes and is flailing its way down a steep grade. The end of the race is likely to be bleak.
Thankfully, Gina Rae La Cerva found the strength to paint a beautiful tapestry of love into her journey, showering readers with love’s unconditional tenderness.
I loved this book.
Feasting Wild delivered me to a place where I devoured a tiny morsel about a subject I knew little about—I may have intuitively understood the topic at hand, but because my head was in the sand, I, like the rest of us, might live in denial.
How did the book make me feel/think?
A troubling, captivating read about mankind eating everything in Earth's pantry.
How did the book make me feel/think?
TROUBLED. CAPTIVATED. BREATHLESS.
Feasting Wild troubled me.
It is an eloquently written story about the history of humanity through the consumption of food.
It is a love story.
It is a beautiful, evocative, eye-opening, thought-provoking, genre-changing gem.
As much as Feasting Wild is about food, it’s not. It deftly delves into societal issues plaguing society today—basically, the disease of ism: Racism + Capitalism. The prose sings in perfect harmony. “Athena’s voice is husky and scratched by cigarettes.”
The book delves deeply into the evolution of humanity, from hunter-gather to consumer, from how a food source jumps from peasant food needed to survival to scarcity, and often extinct when the wealthy members of society determine it to be a delicacy.
As I turned the pages, my appetite shrunk. I realized humanity is parasitic. But, unlike the unsuspecting creatures that are forced into extinction because they consume everything they need for survival, man consuming everything in his path devastates their habitats, resulting in destroyed ecological environs and altering the destiny of all living beings until…?
The difference between man and beast is beast acts instinctively. Whereas a man can see the destruction he’s creating, since our lifespans are minute, we kind of don’t care. But, oh yeah, and we created weapons, and to the animal world, they are weapons of mass destruction.
Feasting Wild troubled me because it made me aware that we are desperately flawed despite all the brilliance of humanity. The consumptive model of capitalism has no brakes and is flailing its way down a steep grade. The end of the race is likely to be bleak.
Thankfully, Gina Rae La Cerva found the strength to paint a beautiful tapestry of love into her journey, showering readers with love’s unconditional tenderness.
I loved this book.
Feasting Wild delivered me to a place where I devoured a tiny morsel about a subject I knew little about—I may have intuitively understood the topic at hand, but because my head was in the sand, I, like the rest of us, might live in denial.
April 12, 2021
Beautifully written narrative book moving between the author's personal experiences and the state of wild foods, conservation, and social growth.
August 12, 2020
As a chef and master gardener, I had high hopes for this book. However, I was disappointed. I do not want to read about how even the wild ramps are becoming over-harvested. How is that possible? Or that the foodways the Native Americans ate three hundred years ago are starting to disappear. Or that eighty percent of our food must be replanted. Note to author: even the indigenous replanted corn, beans, squashes, etc. Yearly.
PS: The goal of foraging is to feed yourself for a day or even up to a week. Not to ship it to the world's most expensive restaurant's test kitchen in order for them to discover ways to preserve it that the average human being cannot possibly duplicate. And I hate to say it but, the majority of the world's population is made up of average citizens. The highly inventive kitchen of Noma only feeds a select few patrons at a time for a huge price.
This is why your precious ramps are disappearing from the wild and from the poor man's table. The very rich have found it trendy to eat simple foods. They pay a fortune for 'foragers' to strip city graveyards for wild onions that many of you mow under in your effort to attain the perfect lawn.Then overprice them. Then cry over- harvesting. And climate change.
More and more good farmland is lost yearly. Why? Some to over building -do we need another strip mall? A great deal of the land is being designated as 'protected'. You cannot build on it nor can you grow on it. Local farmer's markets are disappearing because low income areas can't afford to pay the price for fresh corn, tomatoes, etc. So these foods are trucked to high income areas like Union Square, NYC, or directly to restaurants. Where patrons pay big dollars to eat fresh food.
This is hypocrisy at its finest-excoriate all but the rich for their bad eating habits.
PS: The goal of foraging is to feed yourself for a day or even up to a week. Not to ship it to the world's most expensive restaurant's test kitchen in order for them to discover ways to preserve it that the average human being cannot possibly duplicate. And I hate to say it but, the majority of the world's population is made up of average citizens. The highly inventive kitchen of Noma only feeds a select few patrons at a time for a huge price.
This is why your precious ramps are disappearing from the wild and from the poor man's table. The very rich have found it trendy to eat simple foods. They pay a fortune for 'foragers' to strip city graveyards for wild onions that many of you mow under in your effort to attain the perfect lawn.Then overprice them. Then cry over- harvesting. And climate change.
More and more good farmland is lost yearly. Why? Some to over building -do we need another strip mall? A great deal of the land is being designated as 'protected'. You cannot build on it nor can you grow on it. Local farmer's markets are disappearing because low income areas can't afford to pay the price for fresh corn, tomatoes, etc. So these foods are trucked to high income areas like Union Square, NYC, or directly to restaurants. Where patrons pay big dollars to eat fresh food.
This is hypocrisy at its finest-excoriate all but the rich for their bad eating habits.
May 12, 2020
"Is it possible to feel homesick not for a place but for the past?"
"My favorite time of day is just before dawn, when the nocturnal animals are going to sleep and the others have yet to awaken. The forest is so still and silent. It's amazing. You don't notice how loud the forest is until it becomes quiet. I'll make my coffee over a small kindling fire, and as the sun rises, the forest becomes alive again. Those few moments in between are very special. A landscape of momentary hush. Listening to a day beginning."
Finished reading Feasting Wild by Gina Rae La Cerva. What do you think about the first question? Is it? This book was not what I expected although I rarely go into books with an expectation. This was a journey of what existence looks like in many different places, and what it looked like in the past and potentially what it may look like in the future. It was also a journey of life and love and survival.
There are so many points where she talks about her own life and made me think and feel that it almost somewhat mirrors my own, for example.... "Sometimes I wonder if it is possible to be romantically in love with a moment and everyone in it. I've often felt a sort of intimacy with existence that I could never find with any individual person." But also perhaps reflected in a way of a life I wish I had, or maybe it's the life of my future? Hard to say and hard to explain.
Overall if you're expecting a book about food, it's somewhat that, but more about our path to food and where we were and who we've become. And if you're squeamish about hunting and animals, this is not the book for you. Very well written and I really enjoyed it. Thank you as always Greystone Books it seems you always know the perfect books for me.
"My favorite time of day is just before dawn, when the nocturnal animals are going to sleep and the others have yet to awaken. The forest is so still and silent. It's amazing. You don't notice how loud the forest is until it becomes quiet. I'll make my coffee over a small kindling fire, and as the sun rises, the forest becomes alive again. Those few moments in between are very special. A landscape of momentary hush. Listening to a day beginning."
Finished reading Feasting Wild by Gina Rae La Cerva. What do you think about the first question? Is it? This book was not what I expected although I rarely go into books with an expectation. This was a journey of what existence looks like in many different places, and what it looked like in the past and potentially what it may look like in the future. It was also a journey of life and love and survival.
There are so many points where she talks about her own life and made me think and feel that it almost somewhat mirrors my own, for example.... "Sometimes I wonder if it is possible to be romantically in love with a moment and everyone in it. I've often felt a sort of intimacy with existence that I could never find with any individual person." But also perhaps reflected in a way of a life I wish I had, or maybe it's the life of my future? Hard to say and hard to explain.
Overall if you're expecting a book about food, it's somewhat that, but more about our path to food and where we were and who we've become. And if you're squeamish about hunting and animals, this is not the book for you. Very well written and I really enjoyed it. Thank you as always Greystone Books it seems you always know the perfect books for me.
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