Terroir

September 14, 2020
Poet Sajé (Vivarium) devotes these eight thoughtful essays to exploring how place develops identity, framing the subject using the French viticultural term for “the whole environment in which something... is grown.” Though she acknowledges how her Slovenian father and German mother and their respective cultures influenced her, Sajé muses that for immigrants like her, “terroir does more work than family to shape identity.” Across several essays, Sajé recounts her early marriage to a Black man from Jamaica and his eventual death from lymphoma, honoring her late spouse while also confronting her own white privilege: “I’m chagrined to admit that I thought I had proven my lack of racism by living with Tyrone.” In other essays, Sajé interrogates her feelings of otherness both in the U.S. and during trips to Europe, where even after extensive travels, Sajé concludes that “the traveler is only authorized to be ‘other,’ to observe and to participate in superficial layers of the foreign culture.” This book will fascinate readers interested in the interplay between identity and place.