Modern food is not just the products on the shelves, but the acres and people transformed so we can consume those products. The nineteenth century laid the groundwork for those new places and Tulare Lake, a ghostly landscape, is an example of the violence written into them. Its history can help us wrestle with the full brunt of food choices, and how the health of bodies is entwined with our current food system, its past — and its future. Each jar of peaches or glass of milk produced on Tulare bottomland owes a portion of its nutrients to the land and water management of the ancestors of those who live and work almost within sight of the dried lake, and its existence to layers of violence. Understanding those histories can help guide the ecological and human reanimation of ghost acres.
We linger among the birches. The exertions of Kang La have tired humans and pack stock alike, and with Bhijer cut from our journey, we have a day to burn. We spend it resting in a grove beside a shallow, sparkling river. A second reason for our layover is the predicament of Vishnu, the smallest and youngest among us.
He claims to be fourteen but looks ten. I never see him without his striped wool cap pulled down to his eyebrows. The cap has lop-eared flaps, from which the tie-cords dangle to his chest. His face is dark, his eyes quick and wary. You could not fail to notice him, and not just because he is so small among the adults. His profile would have done well upon a coin or a movie poster, and he carries himself with a lightness that catches the eye. His older brother had been asked to join the expedition, charged with bringing several horses, but an obstacle arose and the brother could not come. The horses, however, were still needed, as was the money to be earned by their rental. And so the family sent Vishnu in his brother’s stead, as custodian for the stock.
Packed with social criticism, satire, ghosts and narrative turns of the screw, Lippman's Dream Girl is indeed a dream of a novel. And all the literary pilferings Lippman herself has committed here are acknowledged, front and center.
Brenda Lozano’s “Loop” is a good litmus test for just how palatable this method has become to a general readership. True to its title, Lozano’s book does go round and round in circles. And though it doesn’t feel intended to alienate, it does reside comfortably on the more experimental end of the spectrum.