In Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees (Harper Collins/Ecco, 2024), Aimee Nezhukumatathil, a nature essayist and poet (also Sierra’s poetry editor), tells her family’s story through a cornucopia of favorite foods, each one the subject of a short essay. She compares her hair to an untamable rambutan. A chapter on lumpia speaks to her mother’s native Philippines. Jackfruits and mangoes remind her of her father’s India. Memories of apples and maple syrup hark back to her years in New York, while stories of watermelons, pecans, and pawpaws tell of her present home in the South.

Each food has its own universe of flavorful associations: Shave ice recalls a vacation with girlfriends in Hawai‘i, a reprieve from the pressures of Covid. Pineapple is what her husband feeds her to hasten the birth of an overdue baby. Babies born, years later, she and her husband declare a Waffle Morning to avoid telling their boys about the shooting at a nearby school.

Complementing Nezhukumatathil’s lively biography are nuggets of natural history, like “six hundred people a year die from coconuts falling on their heads,” and the odd recipe, all spiced by a poet’s playful touch. She takes up a friend’s challenge, for example, to convey the flavor of the indescribably delicious mangosteen: “When you crush a petal of mangosteen in your mouth, / the juice runs clear / and smells the way certain plants sweeten their nectar at night / when they feel the tiptoe-crawl of a bee drawing near.”