#C. Pam Zhang

[dk-thrive]

I can see now that I was hungry for love... For something to love: a bite, a dream, a person, a meal, a field, a piece of a world worth believing in.

— C. Pam Zhang, Land of Milk and Honey (Riverhead Books, September 26, 2023)

[whilereadingandwalking]

In How Much of These Hills is Gold by C. Pam Zhang, after their father dies, two siblings head into the western wilderness to find a place to bury him. As they wander, our narrator Lucy looks back on their bleak lives: their mother's home across the sea, her desperate desire for something more, their father's domestic violence, his struggle in the mines.

This is a twisting historical fiction that really interrogates the line between civility and wilderness, and the violence we inherit, physical and emotional, generational, bitter and violent. It blends gender dysphoria, historical prejudice against Chinese immigrants, and much more into a story about family struggle, poverty, sibling-hood, and the myths of racial and class uplift. It whirls by, stinging and impactful, and some of the prose is genuinely beautiful. It's the first novel that's made me cry in a minute, and well worth the read.

Content warnings for Sinophobia, body horror, sexual assault, domestic abuse, classism.

[rhetoricandlogic]

LAND OF MILK AND HONEY by C Pam Zhang

RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 2023

Climate disaster provides both setting and a sense of urgency to Zhang’s second novel.

“I fled to that country because I would have gone anywhere, done anything, for one last taste of green sharp enough to pierce the caul of my life.” A cloud of smog has enveloped the Earth, hiding the sun and killing most of the planet’s food crops. A young chef takes a job at an “elite research community” perched atop an Italian mountain. Her employer is enigmatic and unnerving. His daughter is brilliant and headstrong. And the chef soon discovers that she is imprisoned in a simulacrum of paradise bound by secrets and ghosts. But, as she cooks lavish meals for those who can afford to escape the smog, she has access to crème fraîche, strawberries, and a French breed of chicken that should be extinct. To say that the narrator represents the moral center of this universe is not to say that she is incorruptible. This is, among other things, a story of what survival looks like in a world riven by gross inequality, and the narrator’s choices are driven by self-interest. Often, those choices come with a side order of self-loathing—a familiar dynamic for many participating in late capitalism. None of this, however, should suggest that Zhang has written a manifesto. Instead, she reminds us of what it’s like to be embodied and living on Earth with sumptuous scenes of food and sex. Zhang earned bountiful accolades—including being longlisted for the Booker Prize—for How Much of These Hills Is Gold (2020), and her skills have only increased since she wrote her stunning debut.

Mournful and luscious, a gothic novel for the twilight of the Anthropocene Era.

[smokefalls]

Imagine Persephone for the first time in the absolute intoxication of dark, her senses stretching languid, the cave as moist as lover’s breath. The feast, the chair, the plate, the fruit: red. Imagine a story whose moral is mute desire.

C Pam Zhang, Land of Milk and Honey

[hotelsongs]

Persephone was no fool, I realized upon rereading the myth. Aida asleep beside me, her breath sour and sweet. Imagine Persephone for the first time in the absolute intoxication of dark, her senses stretching languid, the cave as moist as lover’s breath. The feast, the chair, the plate, the fruit: red. Imagine a story whose moral is mute desire.

Land of Milk and Honey, C Pam Zhang

[dwellordream]

- C Pam Zhang, Land of Milk and Honey

[withheartsaligned]

#oc_tober | introduction

a review from the first umbral moon edition in the seventh astral era of the eorzea chronicle: 'a land of gold and spice' by hikari gakunin is a stunning follow-up to her debut novel, 'void's notes'. gakunin is a breathtakingly fine writer, with an assurance and expertise to her craft that make it hard to believe she has only written two novels. in 'a land of gold and spice', she tells the tale of a chef from ala mhigo working under the employment of a member of the syndicate, weaving a scathing criticism of the inequality of survival between sensual depictions of carnal pleasures and luxurious meals. her third and highly anticipated book 'neath brightest sun' is expected to be published later this year, though there are whispers of a potential delay, following gakunin's enrollment into the eorzean adventurer's guild.

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

[bones-clouds]

books i read in 2024:

“land of milk and honey”

c pam zhang

rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️, 5

genre: dystopia, science fiction, wlw

synopsis:

The award-winning author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold returns with a rapturous and revelatory novel about a young chef whose discovery of pleasure alters her life and, indirectly, the world

A smog has spread. Food crops are rapidly disappearing. A chef escapes her dying career in a dreary city to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony seemingly free of the world’s troubles.

There, the sky is clear again. Rare ingredients abound. Her enigmatic employer and his visionary daughter have built a lush new life for the global elite, one that reawakens the chef to the pleasures of taste, touch, and her own body.

In this atmosphere of hidden wonders and cool, seductive violence, the chef’s boundaries undergo a thrilling erosion. Soon she is pushed to the center of a startling attempt to reshape the world far beyond the plate.

Sensuous and surprising, joyous and bitingly sharp, told in language as alluring as it is original, Land of Milk and Honey lays provocatively bare the ethics of seeking pleasure in a dying world. It is a daringly imaginative exploration of desire and deception, privilege and faith, and the roles we play to survive. Most of all, it is a love letter to food, to wild delight, and to the transformative power of a woman embracing her own appetite.

[spindleprick]

Innocence and tragedy were applied to her young face like makeup,

C Pam Zhang, Land of Milk and Honey

[dk-thrive]

However straight the path may seem, however fixed the destination, there are ways and ways and ways.

— C. Pam Zhang, Land of Milk and Honey (Riverhead Books, September 26, 2023)

[bloodmaarked]

➫ monthly book round-up: november 2024

books read: 8 [=] average rating: 3.63 [=] average speed: 8 days [-27%] total pages: 2,337 [+13%] yearly goal progress: 76/50 [152%] best of the month: adult children of emotionally immature parents, lindsay c. gibson worst of the month: land of milk and honey, c pam zhang

4* reads:

the woman in me, britney spears

the lightning thief, rick riordan

adult children of emotionally immature parents, lindsay c. gibson

the cloisters, katy hays

kim jiyoung, born 1982, cho nam-joo

3.5* reads:

autumn chills, agatha christie

3* reads:

back to black: black radicalism for the 21st century, kehinde andrews

2.5* reads:

land of milk and honey, c pam zhang

currently reading:

the kinder poison, natalie mae

the power, naomi alderman

in every mirror she's black, lolá ákínmádé åkerström

[bookquotesforthesoul]

To me that wine was fig and plum; volcanic soil; wheat fields shading to salt stone; sun; leather, well-baked; and finally, most lingering, strawberry. Psychosomatic, I'm sure, but what flavor isn't?

C Pam Zhang, Land of Milk and Honey

[smokefalls]

I can see now that I was hungry for love that summer. For something to love: a bite, a dream, a person, a meal, a field, a piece of a world worth believing in.

C Pam Zhang, Land of Milk and Honey

[quaalussy]

reading a rly fantastic novel for senior seminar but its almost painful to read because i used to have a huge appetite for apocalypse stories before covid and ever since then they give me nightmares and this book for class is like. pandemic and climate changed induced world collapse. and its about a chef who loses her appetite and finds all food disgusting even when shes put in a situation with as much high end food as she can eat and its abt like desire and food and sex and i cant stop thinking abt it as a metaphor for how long covid can take away your sense of taste and smell and also your energy and thus your enjoyment of hobbies and relationships and passions

and besides how scared it makes i feel like im physically shaking in class hearing ppl talk abt it as a post covid novel and how i can only talk so much about how covid still exists and how the social isolation described in this book is real and its how i feel every single day and whats the point of literary analysis if you dont look around and see that youre in the same situation this book describes and you're ignoring it. just like the Bad Guys in every apocalypse story. its too taboo to talk about covid and people will nod along and shit but you cant make people care...