C Pam Zhang’s Novel ‘Land of Milk and Honey’ Explores Politics of Food and Desire Amid Climate Crisis

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2023

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Acclaimed author C Pam Zhang’s latest novel, “Land of Milk and Honey,” is set after smog blocks the sun, killing 98% of commercial crops and 12% of the human population in famine. Bland mung powder is eaten by all but the very rich, who continue to eat lavishly. As the protagonist — a chef who decides to work for the rich to again taste real food — recalls, “A world was gone. Goodbye to all that, to the person I’d been, to she who’d abandoned, half-eaten, a plate of carnitas under blaze of California sun. It wasn’t grease I missed so much as the revelation of lime. Waiting on grief, I met hunger.” We’ll talk with Zhang about portraying hope in an apocalyptic novel, the interconnections between food, class, culture and climate change, and the meal she’d want to eat if it felt like the world was ending. Guests: C Pam Zhang, author of the novels, “Land of Milk and Honey" and “How Much of These Hills Is Gold." Zhang was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, long-listed for the 2020 Booker Prize and named a National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" Honoree Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:43.1	From KQVD in San Francisco, I'm Mina Kim. Coming up on forum, see Pam Zhang's new novel,
1:06.0	is set in a world that's struggling. After smog blocks the sun killing crops and livestock and plunging the
1:12.1	world into famine a world was gone the chef protagonist recalls goodbye to the person i'd been
1:18.2	to she who'd abandoned half-eaten a plate of carnitas under blaze of california sun we'll talk with
1:24.5	jean about how she sees us reacting to a world of darkness and food scarcity, given our culture of excess, and why she still has faith in humanity.
1:33.3	Zhang's new book is called Land of Milk and Honey. Join us. Welcome to Forum. I'm Mina Kim.
1:48.9	See Pam Zhang's new novel is called Land of Milk and Honey, but it's set in a very deprived dark world,
1:56.1	where there are, quote, no more lemon trees fragrant on the slopes of Greece, no more sugarcane striping Vietnam,
2:02.2	no more small, sweet Indian mangoes. In Zhang's book, a smog that began spreading from a cornfield
2:08.3	in the U.S. has blotted out the sun, killing plants and animals and causing widespread famine.
2:14.5	Zhang writes, scientists bickered over the smog's composition and politicians over
2:18.9	whether pollution or lax carbon taxes or China or nuclear testing or America or Russia were to blame,
2:26.4	and all the while the darkness slightly acidic ate its way through fertile fields.
	...

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