Review: Bite by Bite by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

We all need to eat. Some people experience food as necessary. Others revel in it as more, whether for the taste or the experience of eating a certain thing, or for the memories different foods inspire. Aimee Nezhukumatathil is obviously one of the latter people, as evidenced by her gorgeous collection of essays, each centered on a different food. Some of the foods she discusses are ones I've never eaten. Others are as common to my table as to hers. And each essay made me reflect on the food she was discussing, plumbing my own memories of that specific food or thinking of a food that conjures a similar response in me.

Nezhukumatathil is a beautiful writer and her turns of phrase are as delicious as the foods she's discussing. Most of the foods are just that, a singular food, not a dish or a recipe, although she does discuss where she has eaten each thing, sometimes in context of a larger dish. She weaves the histories of the foods, the people who first discovered or ate them, and the way they were dispersed around the world with very personal reflections on growing up as the American daughter of immigrant parents (a Filipina mother and an Indian father), as a young poet and teacher finding her place in the academic and literary worlds, and as a wife and mother with young, and then teenaged, children. Some of these foods are her heritage, passed down through the generations, and others are newer culinary experiences for her. There are some political moments here, usually tied to identity and to the personal, but they flow easily and organically as the essays unfold. The essays as a whole touch on the full range of emotion but center more on joy and nourishments (or as Nezhukumatathil calls them, jamborees) making this an immensely pleasurable read. Gorgeous full-page color illustrations by Fumi Nakamura show each food or drink discussed, which is helpful and interesting for readers who might be unfamiliar with certain of the foods she mentions. This is a charming, short collection any reader will enjoy consuming "bite by bite."