Terroir

Terroir is a term for the soil and weather that shape what grows in a given place. Natasha Sajé borrows it to examine people and the bonds between them. Her essays focus on how being an immigrant's child has formed her sense of self, and they move back and forth between people she has known and books she has read, using the question of where a person comes from as a lens on language.

The collection follows her through several places. In suburban New Jersey, she is the daughter of European refugees, and she is taken under the wing of an older neighbor who has been widowed. She then spends a winter waiting tables in Switzerland, followed by a marriage to a Jamaican man in Baltimore, and later a marriage to a woman in Salt Lake City. Across these chapters of her life, she offers sharp observations about nationality, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and class.

The tone is more about understanding than sorrow or grievance. Sajé asks how terroir shapes identity and keeps returning to the idea that change is a constant part of life.