Rooted Book Club: BITE BY BITE by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Our August 2024 Book Club Selection

I’m always in awe of the poets-turned-prose writers, those enviable shapeshifters who can concentrate their ideas into syllables or expand them into chapters. Aimee Nezhukumatathil is one such writer, having published four books of poetry before debuting her essay collection, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments in 2020. My introduction to Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s work was through her fourth book of poetry, Oceanic, which delves into some of the themes—pleasure and wonder, identity, the natural world—that animate her essay collections.

World of Wonders launched the established, award-winning poet into a New York Times bestselling author, but through her meteoric rise in the literary world, Aimee has remained firmly rooted in her chosen home of Oxford, Mississippi. There’s another reason I admire Aimee Nezhukumatathil: she uplifts Mississippi whenever possible.

So, are you ready for our August book club pick? Bite by Bite: Nourishments & Jamborees “is a bite of personal and natural history,” Aimee writes, “a serving if you will—scooped up with a dollop of the bounty and largesse of the edible world.” Let’s savor it together. Author Aimee Nezhukumatathil will be joining us on Thursday, August 29 at 7 p.m. CDT to discuss her book. Register now to join the live conversation.

Here’s the official book description:

From the New York Times bestselling author of World of Wonders, a lyrical book of short essays about food, offering a banquet of tastes, smells, memories, associations, and marvelous curiosities from nature

In Bite by Bite, poet and essayist Aimee Nezhukumatathil explores the way food and drink evoke our associations and remembrances—a subtext or layering, a flavor tinged with joy, shame, exuberance, grief, desire, or nostalgia.

Nezhukumatathil restores our astonishment and wonder about food through her encounters with a range of foods and food traditions. From shave ice to lumpia, mangoes to pecans, rambutan to vanilla, she investigates how food marks our experiences and identities and explores the boundaries between heritage and memory.

Bite by Bite offers a rich and textured kaleidoscope of vignettes and visions into the world of food and nature, drawn together by intimate and humorous personal reflections, with Fumi Nakamura's gorgeous imagery and illustration.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of the New York Times best-selling illustrated collection of nature essays, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments, which was chosen as Barnes and Noble’s Book of the Year and named a finalist for the Kirkus Prize. She also wrote four previous poetry collections: Oceanic, Lucky Fish, At the Drive-In Volcano, and Miracle Fruit. With the poet Ross Gay, she co-authored the chapbook Lace & Pyrite, a collaboration of epistolary garden poems. Her writing appears twice in the Best American Poetry Series, The New York Times Magazine, ESPN, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, and The Paris Review.

Honors include a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pushcart Prize, a Mississippi Arts Council grant, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is the first-ever poetry editor for Sierra magazine, the story-telling arm of The Sierra Club. Nezhukumatathil is professor of English and Creative Writing in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program where she received the faculty’s Distinguished Research and Creative Achievement Award.

The Rooted Book Club is in partnership with the Mississippi Book Festival, Lemuria Books, and Friendly City Books. Red Squared records and produces our book club conversations at their podcast studio in The Hangar in Midtown, Jackson.

Bite by Bite is all about food and the meaning it carries. Do you like food writing? Is there a food from your childhood that conjures up powerful sensory memories? Let me know in the comments.