Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by marlan
We Fed an Island: The True Story of Rebuilding Puerto Rico, One Meal at a Time by José Andrés
3.0
I admired Andrés for his work during the government shutdown in January of 2019, helping to feed government workers suddenly without income. And I'm impressed by the amount of meals he was able to deliver to an entire island leveled by a hurricane. But the book reads more like a business journal of events, numbers met, and conversations with other organizational leaders than a narrative of an intense and rewarding experience.
Andrés spends much of the book criticizing other disaster-relief organizations. He talks a lot about his fights with bureaucracy and how FEMA, the Red Cross, and other agencies were ineffective in responding to the crisis and how he mostly had to go it alone without their help. He never seemed to try to understand the other side of things. *Why* were the other aid organizations reluctant to help him? Almost all of the evidence he offers of them doing nothing is anecdotal: the Red Cross claimed to be spending millions in Puerto Rico, but Andrés "never saw" any Red Cross vehicles when he was outside. The governor said he wanted to help, but Andrés only met him once and never saw him again. Maybe the governor was helping Puerto Rico in ways that didn't involve meeting with Andrés?
It wasn't the greatest book to read on the topic of what happened to the people of Puerto Rico. Most of the book takes place in hotels and conference centers, as Andrés talks about the number of meals made and emails sent in his fights with bureaucracy. The most we get of the people is when Andrés hands out meals in a town and "everyone was grateful."
I felt this would have been a more effective book if it had been co-authored with a Puerto Rican who was experiencing food shortages and got involved in the charitable work of Andrés on the ground level, to give more of a human element to the work that was being done.
Still, Andrés makes some good points. Food is more than just calories, to be distributed via military MREs. It's life, culture, community. Giving someone a barely-edible packet doesn't feed the soul the way a hot meal reminiscent of their childhood will. And the ultimate takeaway from the book: if you want to help, just start helping, in any way that you can.
Andrés spends much of the book criticizing other disaster-relief organizations. He talks a lot about his fights with bureaucracy and how FEMA, the Red Cross, and other agencies were ineffective in responding to the crisis and how he mostly had to go it alone without their help. He never seemed to try to understand the other side of things. *Why* were the other aid organizations reluctant to help him? Almost all of the evidence he offers of them doing nothing is anecdotal: the Red Cross claimed to be spending millions in Puerto Rico, but Andrés "never saw" any Red Cross vehicles when he was outside. The governor said he wanted to help, but Andrés only met him once and never saw him again. Maybe the governor was helping Puerto Rico in ways that didn't involve meeting with Andrés?
It wasn't the greatest book to read on the topic of what happened to the people of Puerto Rico. Most of the book takes place in hotels and conference centers, as Andrés talks about the number of meals made and emails sent in his fights with bureaucracy. The most we get of the people is when Andrés hands out meals in a town and "everyone was grateful."
I felt this would have been a more effective book if it had been co-authored with a Puerto Rican who was experiencing food shortages and got involved in the charitable work of Andrés on the ground level, to give more of a human element to the work that was being done.
Still, Andrés makes some good points. Food is more than just calories, to be distributed via military MREs. It's life, culture, community. Giving someone a barely-edible packet doesn't feed the soul the way a hot meal reminiscent of their childhood will. And the ultimate takeaway from the book: if you want to help, just start helping, in any way that you can.