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A review by shanaqui
Mushroom by Sara Rich
informative
reflective
medium-paced
2.0
Sara Rich's entry into the Object Lessons series, Mushroom, is another one which is more about the author and about ideas around mushrooms than about mushrooms in and of themselves. Mushrooms as metaphor, mushrooms in Rich's own life, and only sometimes mushrooms as mushrooms and what they're like.
Still, there are glimpses of what a mushroom actually is, as well as what it means to us, and there are short sections describing a handful of mushrooms you might find and how you'd prepare them to eat, and as such it felt a bit more grounded than some of the other Object Lessons.
That said, I wondered very much at Sara Rich's apparently unselfconscious juxtaposition of "my family's land in Kansas, which used to be a reservation" and her closeness with various Native American people. Your land, huh? You sure about that? You're just talking about something like animism (to simplify it a lot), and yet you think your family can own that land? Hmmm.
Perhaps there's explanations for all that in Rich's full life biography, but it jumped out at me as an oddness (meaning that Rich's life got very much in the way of the actual topic, mushrooms).
Still, there are glimpses of what a mushroom actually is, as well as what it means to us, and there are short sections describing a handful of mushrooms you might find and how you'd prepare them to eat, and as such it felt a bit more grounded than some of the other Object Lessons.
That said, I wondered very much at Sara Rich's apparently unselfconscious juxtaposition of "my family's land in Kansas, which used to be a reservation" and her closeness with various Native American people. Your land, huh? You sure about that? You're just talking about something like animism (to simplify it a lot), and yet you think your family can own that land? Hmmm.
Perhaps there's explanations for all that in Rich's full life biography, but it jumped out at me as an oddness (meaning that Rich's life got very much in the way of the actual topic, mushrooms).