A cozy read that’s meant to be savored and sipped, this book wraps you up in warm stories, flavorful recipes, and delightful illustrations, perfect for curling up with on a quiet evening.

Bite by Bite is a beautifully earnest collection of essays surrounding Nezhukumatathil’s experiences with various foods. It’s certainly the same kind of soft adoration, admiration, awe, and appreciation that World of Wonders did. However, I couldn’t help but feel like this collection was much more disjointed and therefore less enjoyable & compelling than the first. I think maybe this is because narrowing things down to just food limited the ways in which the author could speak of experiences and history (when compared to the vastness of natural phenomena documented in World of Wonders). I still reveled in the art and the common foods and stories we shared around them, but ultimately this did not meet my expectations.

A beautifully lyrical book, foodies will find this absolutely captivating. A must-read for all those interested in food!

I absolutely adored this book, as much as the essay collection before (World of Wonders). Aimee could write about the furniture she has sat on and I'd still love every word. This one made me hungry and curious, the best combination for adventures.

I just love Aimee Nezhukumatathil. This is so utterly gorgeous and sensational that it will quickly become a title I recommend to patrons when they are looking for shorter essays! Nezhukumatathil is a woman after my own heart... first animals, then food, what's next?

Bite by Bite is a captivating exploration of food's power to evoke memories and emotions. Poet and essayist Aimee Nezhukumatathil takes readers on a culinary journey, examining a diverse array of foods from shave ice to lumpia, and rambutan to vanilla.
Nezhukumatathil's lyrical prose brings each dish to life, interweaving personal anecdotes with broader reflections on culture, identity, and the environment. Her approach restores a sense of wonder to our relationship with food, encouraging readers to consider the complex web of associations that accompany each bite.
The book's strength lies in its ability to balance intimate reflections with larger themes, touching on heritage, memory, and the ethical considerations of food consumption. Fumi Nakamura's illustrations complement the text beautifully, adding visual richness to the narrative.
Bite by Bite offers a fresh perspective on food writing, blending poetry, memoir, and cultural commentary. It's a thoughtful and engaging read that will appeal to food enthusiasts, nature lovers, and anyone interested in the intersection of cuisine and personal experience.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is an author whom I adore. I have met her a few times and I am a bigger fan each time our paths meet! If she writes it, I will read it! Every time! So glad she is a part of our Mississippi literary community! Everyone should read her works! Love this book and her wonder and curiosity about food, ingredients, taste, and the whole experience wrapped around the art of the bite!

Beautiful and quiet. I enjoyed my time reading these essays, it felt like respite from the chaos of summer time with kids home from school and a gentle reminder of how fast it all goes.

Aimee Nez does it again with this amazing collection of food tidbits. What a treat to have her as part of Mississippi's stellar line up of authors.

“What we think about food is a portal into our own personal histories, ourselves—and most lovely of all, it’s a chance to deepen our connection with others.”

Bite by Bite: Nourishment + Jamborees, is a collection of essays by author and poet, Aimee Nezhukumatathil. This reads like a memoir focused around food, cultural facts and the occasional poem. There are a total of 40 essays, each beginning with a colorful illustration of the specific food item. Although, this isn’t my usual reading genre, I did enjoy this quiet, reflective book. Thankful I heard about it from the Modern Mrs. Darcy Bookclub’s Summer Reading Guide.

I enjoyed reading about Nezhukumatathil’s childhood memories, relating to some and nodding in agreement at how much she wanted the coveted “four-colored jumbo pen.” As a WNYer, I also enjoyed that many of her essays mentioned foods and experiences from her time spent in WNY. (Although, I was surprised to hear her say that any SUNY college wasn’t diverse…maybe back in that time.)

I was happy to receive this as an eGalley from NetGalley and HarperCollins Publishers in exchange for an honest review.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil always gives me such a spiritual reading experience whether I'm reading her poetry or essays. Her newest collection was a much needed read for me as I wrapped up another school year with all the stress that comes with it. Each essay/poem/story in Bite by Bite begins with a fruit, vegetable, herb, etc. but, proceed to go much deeper than the surface level and that is beautiful. Some stories made me laugh, some made me sob, but all made me feel deeply. Most of us have stories and connections related to certain foods though I don't imagine I could express those memories and feelings in as profound away as she does. The illustrations at the start of each essay are stunning, this is a book that should be displayed and frequently flipped through. I can't wait to pick up a hard copy. I appreciated being introduced to some foods that I hadn't heard of or was less familiar with because they are not as accessible or used in my culture - I am eager to get my hands of some news treats now!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an eARC in return for a fair and honest review.

Having previously taught essays from Nezhukumatathil's latest collection of essays, I was looking forward to this one, and it did not disappoint. There is much to cherish here, and even more so that her latest collection, this leans into poetry and her current family as much as her past. Also made me go out and buy some mangoes.

It’s a common experience: walk into an unfamiliar place and a familiar scent transports you back in time. Perhaps it’s to your grandmother’s kitchen as she taught you to make biscuits or maybe to your first apartment, the tiny one over the delicious Indian restaurant that taught you to love curry. Maybe the scent takes you to the church basement where long tables were spread with every dish imaginable, including Mrs. Taylor’s famous lasagna. Our sense of smell has a remarkable ability to unlock memories, so it’s no surprise that many of our memories are tied to food.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil certainly agrees, and her latest, Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees, is a veritable smorgasbord of flavors, from mint and mango to shaved ice and halo-halo. It is also, of course, a multi-course menu of memories, as Nezhukumatathil uses these foods as a way to share stories of her past, her family, and her culture, as well as insistent wonder at and encouragement to notice the goodness abundant in our world.

She writes stories of home, both the homes and kitchens she has inhabited and the natural world we share and that feeds us so well. “For what is home,” she asks in the introduction, “if not the first place where you learn what does (and does not) nourish you?”

Each brief entry in Bite by Bite focuses on a single food and opens with a full-color illustration from artist Fumi Mini Nakamura, drawings that Nezhukumatathil calls “magical and marvelous” in her acknowledgments. These lively pieces draw the reader in, but it is the words that bring each food to life. In most chapters, Nezhukumatathil blends memoir or personal reflection with historical or botanical information on each item, making unexpected connections along the way.

The first chapter, focused on the rambutan, pairs a story about her curly hair and an upcoming middle school dance with the description of this “fruit with the wildest curly spinterns radiating from its bright scarlet skin” before going on to describe the height and fruiting frequency of rambutan trees and the size of its drupe (“about the length of a double-A battery”).

Bouncing from these informative moments into reflection, Nezhukumatathil wrestles with her desire to have hair like the other girls her age, teased and sprayed despite her Filipina mother’s prohibition against hair products. Then she takes readers back to the first time she visited her grandmother in India and found that she had the same beautiful curly hair, “a dark waterfall across her back.” That realization didn’t change her feelings about her hair, at least not right away. It would be many more years before she could write these words: “Let the questions of what is beauty and what is not-beauty fruit down your back. I can’t bear (or more accurately, tolerate) anything less than the weight of the same waterfall from my grandmother.”

Words such as “drupe,” “aril,” or “stolons” remind you that the author is a naturalist and also a poet, always in search of the perfect word. Sometimes she includes her poetry, as when she tries to describe the ineffable flavor of mangosteen: “like a poem with the word ghost in at least four different languages / a cage trap of lightning, a sheen of sugar in a bowl.”

At other times, her prose is just as poetic, as in the chapter describing a snowy day when she made gifts of homemade vanilla extract with her son: “Inside a little ranch house, a mother was teaching her son how to tie a bow of red-and-white baker’s twine for each gift tag. How to make something that wouldn’t stay yours, but would be a remembrance of the grace in slowing down and thinking of the future, of others’ happiness.”

The book is uneven in a few spots where the tenuous connections don’t hold, as in the chapter on apples that shifts jarringly to her heartsickness over mass shootings. Despite the occasional misstep, however, there is much to love in these pages. In the conclusion, she highlights her mother’s signature dessert: leche flan. Because it stands out in her memory, Nezhukumatathil wonders if her children or her guests will remember the times she tried to make something special for them. She concludes that they likely won’t recall the details, “but that’s not the point when it comes to loved ones. You heat up the waffle iron. You shave the ice. … You take the extra bit of time. It doesn’t always turn out how you think it should. You make it anyway.”

Bite by Bite proves the power of the extra steps taken, the intentional acts of caring and provision that live on in our memories long after the last bite.

Sensory and visceral. The food feels alive here. I love how the essay about mangos unfurled into such a larger history and origin story, like a beautiful unfurling. I found the writing lush, appealing, and engaging. I felt very alive after reading Nezhukumatathil's BITE BY BITE - thank you!

**Many thanks to NetGalley, Ecco, and Aimee Nezhukumatathil for an ARC of this book!**

Exquisite, sumptuous, full of life, and BURSTING with flavor!

Aimee Nezhukumatathil's latest treasure trove of essays will give you a taste of some of the best and most unique foods our planet has to offer...AND will also give you insight, heart, and a peek into not only her whirlwind (and sometimes global!) adventures, but also the intrinsic joy that can be found in the minutiae of everyday life...if you just know where to look! Each essay in the collection focuses on a different food, from some that I already knew and loved prior to reading (Mint, Strawberry, Concord Grape, and a personal favorite, Gyro) to those that may be as unfamiliar to you as they were to me (Mangosteen, Jackfruit, Miracle Fruit and Kaong). Each journey is emboldened by carefully chosen research and the 'history' of the food being explored, but ALSO cleverly takes you on a tour of a time period in Aimee's life, past or present, connecting the dots effortlessly throughout. You will lose yourself not only in the imagining of the taste, smell, and texture of each food being discussed (if you choose to go at this on an empty stomach, you do so at your own peril!) but also in the magnificent storytelling of a beautiful and humble life well-lived, the bonds of a loving family, and the nostalgia of a fascinating past.

Though Nezhukumatathil has published several books, she is perhaps best known for World of Wonders, which catapulted her firmly into the national spotlight when Barnes and Noble chose it as their Book of the Year in 2020 (no small feat!) Though this is an incredible accomplishment in and of itself, I actually must admit that I JUMPED at the opportunity to read and review a copy of this book for an entirely DIFFERENT reason: I had the privilege and honor of actually being Aimee's STUDENT (as well as a student in her intelligent, kind, fellow creative writing professor husband, Dustin Parsons) back when I was studying English at SUNY Fredonia...and let's just say I never considered an MFA in Creative Writing MORE intently than when I was a member of her Creative Writing Class (and Professor Parsons, too...I realize now I was INCREDIBLY lucky!)

So to get a chance to dive more deeply into her mind, life, and of course, to enjoy the gorgeous, effortless writing of this beloved figure from my college years was MORE than a pleasure: I was EXUBERANT. From hearing about Aimee's teen years and insecurities, to her family life, to the origins of her beautiful love story with ANOTHER beloved professor, this book felt like having a very honest, authentic, and ENTHRALLING conversation with the sort of fascinating, intelligent soul you never want to stop talking, and I feel so much better for it. Though she and Dustin have settled in (quite happily) at another university since my graduation in 2009, it was both shocking and saddening to hear some of the hardships she faced among fellow faculty in the small (somewhat rural) town and the judgment that made this such a difficult time in her life. Reading these words, I almost felt like I was reading Aimee's diaries, and at times I wanted nothing more than to reach through the pages and give her a hug!

Despite any and all personal hardships, Aimee Nezhukumatathil (or Aimee Nez, as she always told her students to call her) embodies a certain joie de vivre: her exploration, fascination, and passion for the earth and all of its magnificent inhabitants, from plants to animals to bugs - you name it! - always imbues her writing with the sort of excitement you'd see from a scientist making an earth shattering discovery - each essay, each page, each WORD feels like a revelation. And if you feel inspired and ambitious enough, there are even some FANTASTIC writing prompts at the end of the book just to get your creative juices flowing!

When you have a meal that is just SO good it takes your breath away, you might stop, breathe deeply, close your eyes, and try to savor the moment, so it can live on in your memory forever. Such is Bite by Bite: but be warned that with food THIS good...by the time these 200 pages of food, flavor, and fun are over...you'll ALREADY be ravenous for more!

4.5 stars, rounded up to 5

Beautiful writing about food and life. I liked the mix of food I’ve never heard of and new takes on very familiar food. Highly recommend.

A love letter to food and family, a delight for the senses, and if you happen to be in need of one, a gorgeous gift book as well.

Bite by Bite is like a buffet of beautiful appetizers. Each short essay combines memoir and a delightful history surrounding food. The author's warmth, her love of family and the natural world comes through in each piece.In the essay about coconut the author tells us that male monkeys can pick 1600 coconuts in a day, female monkeys can pick 600 and a human can pick around 70. There is a training school for monkeys to perfect this task (humanely run of course). I loved having this tiny piece of information.
While I thoroughly enjoyed the book, I found myself hungry for longer pieces, more depth and variety of experience. This is a perfect for a gift for special occasions, for food lovers or those who just like to like to drift off with a short, sweet essay at the end of the day.

Many thanks to NetGalley for allowing me to read and review this book

Thanks to Ecco and NetGalley for the eARC!

I discovered Aimee's work not too long ago and have been a fan of her work. I was delighted by the stories she told revolving around food, heritage, and culture. Also, the illustrations really helped amplify these amazing stories. I can't wait to read her next book!

This collection that celebrates the joy of food, culture, and connection is absolutely delicious. Nezhukumatathil's lyrical prose deftly weaves anecdotes, recipes, and vivid descriptions that feed the mind and the heart. All of my senses were engaged – and the affection for food and what it means to us inspired me to think about the dishes and meals that have their hooks in me: the Russian Teacakes I always make for Christmas, the first bite of a banh mi sandwich in New York City, a scone in Scotland eaten outside during a snowfall.

If you plan your travels around what you'll eat and where — and if your first thought when someone is coming to visit is, 'What should I make for them?', this book is for you.