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American Harvest: God, Country, and Farming in the Heartland
An epic story of the American wheat harvest, the politics of food, and the culture of the Great Plains.
For over one hundred years, the Mockett family has owned a seven-thousand-acre wheat farm in the panhandle of Nebraska, where Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s father was raised. Mockett, who grew up in bohemian Carmel, California, with her father and her Japanese mother, knew little about farming when she inherited this land. Her father had all but forsworn it.
In American Harvest, Mockett accompanies a group of evangelical Christian wheat harvesters through the heartland at the invitation of Eric Wolgemuth, the conservative farmer who has cut her family’s fields for decades. As Mockett follows Wolgemuth’s crew on the trail of ripening wheat from Texas to Idaho, they contemplate what Wolgemuth refers to as “the divide,” inadvertently peeling back layers of the American story to expose its contradictions and unhealed wounds. She joins the crew in the fields, attends church, and struggles to adapt to the rhythms of rural life, all the while continually reminded of her own status as a person who signals “not white,” but who people she encounters can’t quite categorize.
American Harvest is an extraordinary evocation of the land and a thoughtful exploration of ingrained beliefs, from evangelical skepticism of evolution to cosmopolitan assumptions about food production and farming. With exquisite lyricism and humanity, this astonishing book attempts to reconcile competing versions of our national story.
For over one hundred years, the Mockett family has owned a seven-thousand-acre wheat farm in the panhandle of Nebraska, where Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s father was raised. Mockett, who grew up in bohemian Carmel, California, with her father and her Japanese mother, knew little about farming when she inherited this land. Her father had all but forsworn it.
In American Harvest, Mockett accompanies a group of evangelical Christian wheat harvesters through the heartland at the invitation of Eric Wolgemuth, the conservative farmer who has cut her family’s fields for decades. As Mockett follows Wolgemuth’s crew on the trail of ripening wheat from Texas to Idaho, they contemplate what Wolgemuth refers to as “the divide,” inadvertently peeling back layers of the American story to expose its contradictions and unhealed wounds. She joins the crew in the fields, attends church, and struggles to adapt to the rhythms of rural life, all the while continually reminded of her own status as a person who signals “not white,” but who people she encounters can’t quite categorize.
American Harvest is an extraordinary evocation of the land and a thoughtful exploration of ingrained beliefs, from evangelical skepticism of evolution to cosmopolitan assumptions about food production and farming. With exquisite lyricism and humanity, this astonishing book attempts to reconcile competing versions of our national story.
396 pages, Hardcover
First published April 7, 2020
78 people are currently reading
1692 people want to read
About the author
Marie Mutsuki Mockett
4 books115 followersMarie Mutsuki Mockett, a writer of fiction and nonfiction, was born to an American father and Japanese mother. American Harvest: God, Country and Farming in the Heartland (Graywolf) won the 2021 Northern Californian Book Award for General Nonfiction and follows Mockett’s journey through seven heartland states in the company of evangelical Christian harvesters, while examining the role of GMOs, God, agriculture, and race in society. Her memoir, “Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye,” examines grief against the backdrop of the 2011 Great East Earthquake in Japan and was a finalist for the 2016 PEN Open Book Award, Indies Choice Best Book for Nonfiction and the Northern California Book Award for Creative Nonfiction. A novel, The Tree Doctor is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2023, and a collection of essays, How to Be a Californian, will follow. She lives in northern California with her family.
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April 8, 2021
This is an account of the experiences of the author in the summer of 2017 as she followed a custom harvest crew as they cut grain starting in Texas and proceeding north through Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado and finally Idaho. She lived with the crew, not as a working member, but as an author collecting material for a book. The book does convey much information about agricultural matters, soil science and geologic history. However, even more text is devoted to conversations with the crew exploring their religious and world views thus exploring the rural-urban cultural divide.
Speaking of cultural divides, there's one between the author and the crew. The author is a non-religious college educated liberal humanist raised in a bi-cultural (Japanese/American) home. The harvest crew is made up of conservative religious Mennonites from Pennsylvania with limited interest in higher education. However, the author explores religious beliefs and a variety of church services with the enthusiasm of an impartial anthropologist.
On the other hand, the author and harvesters do have some common interests. The American side of the author's extended family owns thousands of acres of wheat crop in Nebraska and Colorado. That is how she met the crew in the first place because they were the group that had cut the wheat on the family’s land for many years. But the author and her uncles don't live in Nebraska. They're absentee landlords, living on the coasts, with the author being from San Francisco.
The back story leading up to the author's family owning farm land and the story of why a crew from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania is harvesting in the Great Plains both together set up a spectrum of cultural and religious differences illustrative of the state of the nation. Conservative readers may find themselves represented in this narrative while liberals can identify with the author's perspective. However the emphasis on cultural divide is more focused on the rural/urban and religious/secular divides than on issues related to American politics.
Over time the author noted some dissension among crew members, and eventually it became apparent the she was the cause. The story is told from her point of view, and she isn't sure herself why her presence is causing a problem. The author is self-conscious about her brown skin that allows her to be mistaken for Latinx or Native American, so there's some wondering if she's perceived as an exotic. I think the fact that she is a middle aged woman with a child that she left in the care of her husband while she spent a whole summer traveling with a crew of mostly men tainted their perception of her in a negative way. At one point she is asked if she is acting out a midlife crisis to which she replies that this is the sort of thing that artists do. Then she muses that perhaps writers by definition are in a perpetual midlife crisis. Two of the crew members who were college students appear to enjoy talking to her while many of the others seem less interested in communicating with her. It seems to have been another manifestation of cultural divide. I found it interesting that when she checked in with the crew the following year she was told that the crew was working together better than the previous year.
A review of this book's discussion of religion is contained in this
Here is a review of this book from the Anabaptist World magazine.
I've read one other book by Marie Mutsuki Mockett titled Picking Bones from Ash . We discussed it in 2010 at a meeting of the Barista Book Group in Kansa City. At that time Mockett was flying from California to New York City with her new born son and her recently widowed mother, and they decided to stop in Kansas City for a day, visit the Nelson Atkins Art Gallery, and then visit our book group that evening. I have a copy of a photo taken at that book group meeting someplace, but I'll have to look for it.
An interview with the author:
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/news-an...
Speaking of cultural divides, there's one between the author and the crew. The author is a non-religious college educated liberal humanist raised in a bi-cultural (Japanese/American) home. The harvest crew is made up of conservative religious Mennonites from Pennsylvania with limited interest in higher education. However, the author explores religious beliefs and a variety of church services with the enthusiasm of an impartial anthropologist.
On the other hand, the author and harvesters do have some common interests. The American side of the author's extended family owns thousands of acres of wheat crop in Nebraska and Colorado. That is how she met the crew in the first place because they were the group that had cut the wheat on the family’s land for many years. But the author and her uncles don't live in Nebraska. They're absentee landlords, living on the coasts, with the author being from San Francisco.
The back story leading up to the author's family owning farm land and the story of why a crew from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania is harvesting in the Great Plains both together set up a spectrum of cultural and religious differences illustrative of the state of the nation. Conservative readers may find themselves represented in this narrative while liberals can identify with the author's perspective. However the emphasis on cultural divide is more focused on the rural/urban and religious/secular divides than on issues related to American politics.
Over time the author noted some dissension among crew members, and eventually it became apparent the she was the cause. The story is told from her point of view, and she isn't sure herself why her presence is causing a problem. The author is self-conscious about her brown skin that allows her to be mistaken for Latinx or Native American, so there's some wondering if she's perceived as an exotic. I think the fact that she is a middle aged woman with a child that she left in the care of her husband while she spent a whole summer traveling with a crew of mostly men tainted their perception of her in a negative way. At one point she is asked if she is acting out a midlife crisis to which she replies that this is the sort of thing that artists do. Then she muses that perhaps writers by definition are in a perpetual midlife crisis. Two of the crew members who were college students appear to enjoy talking to her while many of the others seem less interested in communicating with her. It seems to have been another manifestation of cultural divide. I found it interesting that when she checked in with the crew the following year she was told that the crew was working together better than the previous year.
A review of this book's discussion of religion is contained in this
Here is a review of this book from the Anabaptist World magazine.
I've read one other book by Marie Mutsuki Mockett titled Picking Bones from Ash . We discussed it in 2010 at a meeting of the Barista Book Group in Kansa City. At that time Mockett was flying from California to New York City with her new born son and her recently widowed mother, and they decided to stop in Kansas City for a day, visit the Nelson Atkins Art Gallery, and then visit our book group that evening. I have a copy of a photo taken at that book group meeting someplace, but I'll have to look for it.
An interview with the author:
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/news-an...
August 12, 2020
I just reread the book and because this is my first review on goodreads and I want to give a fair review of this book. I read this book with great interest, and I realize that someone will read this book either out of curiosity or entertainment. I have an ag background, and you won't (and probably should not) select this book to be educated by the author on farming, she simply doesn't have the knowledge or experience.
Oh, I know, there's a lot of 5 star reviews out there with some pretty heavy hitters commenting on its authenticity and narrative, and they should -- the writing does have some great moments. However, there are just too many ingredients and it doesn't quite make the cake. And I'm not an expert, either.
But I grew up in the plains, still own a farm there, I was raised Mennonite, and I moved to California, so I will comment on what is not working in this book for me. You have to put some of the responsibility back on Graywolf Press for throwing caution to the wind as the author is simply trying to grapple with too many topics.
But the first thing that Graywolf should have done was get a handle on the author’s tone, which lacks any sort of humility, like this paragraph from the author website: “When Paul and Luella married—the son of the town doctor and daughter of the town dentist—the two wealthiest families in town were united. They continued to make farming a part of their activities, though not the sole professional focus. At its peak, the farm was 7000 acres. The Mocketts alternate the fields planted each year, which means that in any harvest season, they need to cut around 3,000 acres.”
I have also noticed that since the author has been called out several times regarding the actual size of the remaining farm (less than half of what it once was), there was an attempt to clarify that when she was interview on NET, but this is the type of boastful disclosure that does not endear the writing to the farming community.
I think critical attitudes that drive the author out of town (and she really does box up her stuff and slips out in the wee hours) have less to do with the author’s race and more to do with that author lacks in knowledge and social pragmatics. She admitted to the LA Times that “socially, I really struggled” in high school. And it seems like she continues to struggle, maybe with the feelings of imposter syndrome, which is evident in the book. I've heard her in the interviews and readings over the past few weeks and she talks about her experiences using big words in front of the harvesters, talking about viewing incredible sunsets through the weeds, she knew she was her grandmother's favorite. It's one thing to bare all, but there is just no sensitivity in the things she says to those around her.
As a person of faith raised Mennonite, I found that her observations and novelties about Amish, Old Mennonites, Mennonites, etc., were extremely insulting, in one part trying to identify someone’s heritage based on the manner of speaking. And while the author mentions that the men who work on the harvest crew are virgins until marriage, the author’s reflections of her own marriage and the vows and sanctity associated with marriage and fidelity are glaringly absent.
We don't know much about her father except he wasn't a farmer. But there are elements in this book that give pause for the reader to imagine what happened. We know that the farm is no longer what it was -- but half is gone. Whether it was because her dad didn't work a steady job and they sold off parcels to pay bills or for her education, we may never know. There are many times where I actually feel embarrassed for the author. Can you just imagine how unnerving it is for the harvesters that resent her presence? They are out there trying to get this crop harvested and here comes the former boss's daughter in her enormous hat, shiny boots and skinny jeans complete with her notebook and annoying questions.
Whether the author accomplished what she set out to prove, the reader will need to decide, because I cannot determine this. But if I need an education on plains farming, I will always go back to the works of Wright Morris, Ted Kooser and Mari Sandoz.
Oh, I know, there's a lot of 5 star reviews out there with some pretty heavy hitters commenting on its authenticity and narrative, and they should -- the writing does have some great moments. However, there are just too many ingredients and it doesn't quite make the cake. And I'm not an expert, either.
But I grew up in the plains, still own a farm there, I was raised Mennonite, and I moved to California, so I will comment on what is not working in this book for me. You have to put some of the responsibility back on Graywolf Press for throwing caution to the wind as the author is simply trying to grapple with too many topics.
But the first thing that Graywolf should have done was get a handle on the author’s tone, which lacks any sort of humility, like this paragraph from the author website: “When Paul and Luella married—the son of the town doctor and daughter of the town dentist—the two wealthiest families in town were united. They continued to make farming a part of their activities, though not the sole professional focus. At its peak, the farm was 7000 acres. The Mocketts alternate the fields planted each year, which means that in any harvest season, they need to cut around 3,000 acres.”
I have also noticed that since the author has been called out several times regarding the actual size of the remaining farm (less than half of what it once was), there was an attempt to clarify that when she was interview on NET, but this is the type of boastful disclosure that does not endear the writing to the farming community.
I think critical attitudes that drive the author out of town (and she really does box up her stuff and slips out in the wee hours) have less to do with the author’s race and more to do with that author lacks in knowledge and social pragmatics. She admitted to the LA Times that “socially, I really struggled” in high school. And it seems like she continues to struggle, maybe with the feelings of imposter syndrome, which is evident in the book. I've heard her in the interviews and readings over the past few weeks and she talks about her experiences using big words in front of the harvesters, talking about viewing incredible sunsets through the weeds, she knew she was her grandmother's favorite. It's one thing to bare all, but there is just no sensitivity in the things she says to those around her.
As a person of faith raised Mennonite, I found that her observations and novelties about Amish, Old Mennonites, Mennonites, etc., were extremely insulting, in one part trying to identify someone’s heritage based on the manner of speaking. And while the author mentions that the men who work on the harvest crew are virgins until marriage, the author’s reflections of her own marriage and the vows and sanctity associated with marriage and fidelity are glaringly absent.
We don't know much about her father except he wasn't a farmer. But there are elements in this book that give pause for the reader to imagine what happened. We know that the farm is no longer what it was -- but half is gone. Whether it was because her dad didn't work a steady job and they sold off parcels to pay bills or for her education, we may never know. There are many times where I actually feel embarrassed for the author. Can you just imagine how unnerving it is for the harvesters that resent her presence? They are out there trying to get this crop harvested and here comes the former boss's daughter in her enormous hat, shiny boots and skinny jeans complete with her notebook and annoying questions.
Whether the author accomplished what she set out to prove, the reader will need to decide, because I cannot determine this. But if I need an education on plains farming, I will always go back to the works of Wright Morris, Ted Kooser and Mari Sandoz.
May 11, 2020
This was...very strange. Just so muddled and meandering and vague and...it didn't seem to have any coherent central thread. Mockett leaps from one thing to the next abruptly, so that the book ends up feeling like a recounting of endless similar conversations she has over the course of her wheat-harvesting trip. The premise is fascinating but it just felt really poorly executed to me. Plus she makes SO MANY sweeping generalizations: about farmers, about rural people, about city people, about Native Americans, about Christians...just over and over again again. This book felt completely lacking in nuance, to the point that I found it painful to read at times.
At one point she uses the phrase "after the West was won"...like, to refer to the time after white settlers colonized the Pacific Northwest. What? This book was full of things like that. Like she was trying to get into all the ways that race, history, geography and religion intersect in relation to farming and especially her own family's history on the land...but it kept missing the mark.
At one point she uses the phrase "after the West was won"...like, to refer to the time after white settlers colonized the Pacific Northwest. What? This book was full of things like that. Like she was trying to get into all the ways that race, history, geography and religion intersect in relation to farming and especially her own family's history on the land...but it kept missing the mark.
March 19, 2020
Highly recommended.
On the surface you might think this is an unbiased attempt at an ethnography of a wheat harvesting crew or anthropological study of heartland Americans. But this book is SO much more intimate than I expected it to be, and it is moving.
The gears that turn these pages consist of memoir, American history, and the science of farming. But the grease for those gears are the palpable tensions of race, spirituality, identity and various degrees of hospitality shown by the harvesters and Midwestern farmers.
Mockett writes with deep vulnerability and displays genuine humility when she is with her subjects. Yet she never panders, never overshares, and -- to her immense credit -- shows us all how to questions our presuppositions while maintaining our personal dignity. It's a remarkable feat, and might be the most important contribution in her desire for us all to overcome the "divide." Highly recommended.
On the surface you might think this is an unbiased attempt at an ethnography of a wheat harvesting crew or anthropological study of heartland Americans. But this book is SO much more intimate than I expected it to be, and it is moving.
The gears that turn these pages consist of memoir, American history, and the science of farming. But the grease for those gears are the palpable tensions of race, spirituality, identity and various degrees of hospitality shown by the harvesters and Midwestern farmers.
Mockett writes with deep vulnerability and displays genuine humility when she is with her subjects. Yet she never panders, never overshares, and -- to her immense credit -- shows us all how to questions our presuppositions while maintaining our personal dignity. It's a remarkable feat, and might be the most important contribution in her desire for us all to overcome the "divide." Highly recommended.
May 3, 2020
This book is a home run. I rarely give books an honest and genuine 5 stars, but this one is truly one. It is complex, insightful, thought provoking, and has given me much to ruminate on after finishing the last page. It is multilayered and grapples with such complicated issues for which there simply is not an easy or right answer. Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s narrative is engaging, insightful, and drew me in as I became acquainted with the main characters, the internal and external conflicts of the harvester crew, and began to truly understand that nothing is “black and white”, rather they are a multitudes of shades of grey. I will carry this book with me moving forward and will share it far and wide to open conversations that are far too long in coming.
June 22, 2020
This book has a lot to offer but I have to point out two glaring omissions:
Organic farming is about so much more than just using GMO seeds which the book never explicitly defines. GMO plants are engineered to not die when slathered with of vast amounts of highly toxic pesticides, particulally glyphosate. These chemicals spill into and kill our water systems—here in Minnesota 70% of the pollution in the Mississippi River was found to be agricultural runoff. Chemicals dry out the soil making it prone to erosion, many feet of the best topsoil has already blown away. Trace toxins get into our food, contributing to cancer, diabetes, neurological problems etc. Folks are winning their cancer lawsuits against Monsanto. GMO companies make a slight change in a seed’s genetic code and patent it and farmers are legally not allowed to save seeds from year to year as they did. The massive expense of buying chemicals and seeds every year has put many small farmers out of business leaving big ag to produce to produce the same three products year after year—corn, wheat, soybeans. Four seed companies control 62% of our food supply. Etc Etc You get the picture.
Also many references to city atheists and rural Christians. I lived in San Francisco and know there are all kinds of believers there including Christians, just more liberal. Google notes 528 churches in SF and it’s not a big city.
Otherwise, it was a big feat for Mockett to make this trip and write about it with grace. I learned many things. The book does jump from farming to religion to history to being bi-racial etc. but I liked it, all intertwined, like life.
Organic farming is about so much more than just using GMO seeds which the book never explicitly defines. GMO plants are engineered to not die when slathered with of vast amounts of highly toxic pesticides, particulally glyphosate. These chemicals spill into and kill our water systems—here in Minnesota 70% of the pollution in the Mississippi River was found to be agricultural runoff. Chemicals dry out the soil making it prone to erosion, many feet of the best topsoil has already blown away. Trace toxins get into our food, contributing to cancer, diabetes, neurological problems etc. Folks are winning their cancer lawsuits against Monsanto. GMO companies make a slight change in a seed’s genetic code and patent it and farmers are legally not allowed to save seeds from year to year as they did. The massive expense of buying chemicals and seeds every year has put many small farmers out of business leaving big ag to produce to produce the same three products year after year—corn, wheat, soybeans. Four seed companies control 62% of our food supply. Etc Etc You get the picture.
Also many references to city atheists and rural Christians. I lived in San Francisco and know there are all kinds of believers there including Christians, just more liberal. Google notes 528 churches in SF and it’s not a big city.
Otherwise, it was a big feat for Mockett to make this trip and write about it with grace. I learned many things. The book does jump from farming to religion to history to being bi-racial etc. but I liked it, all intertwined, like life.
June 26, 2020
Slow and self-indulgent. A meandering discourse on the history and differences in religion, politics, farming and more from the perspective of a Californian invited to travel with farmers. It took much patience to get through. I found the author’s opinions annoying.
March 27, 2020
Subtle, profound, full of spiritual questions about our relationship to the physical world, to food and producing it, and written with great wisdom. Mockett is a brilliant writer.
December 28, 2023
This is one of those books that I wish more people read because it is astonishingly important and nuanced. If you are at all interested in understanding people who are different from you, or where the political divide originates from, or the biases towards other people that run so deep we don't even see them, this is probably for you. Marie Mutsuki Mockett's writing is a gorgeous struggle with empathy and her own challenges of figuring out when empathy is even appropriate; a brutally honest examination of when we think we're right and we're not and vice versa.
I will be thinking about American Harvest for a long while to come.
I will be thinking about American Harvest for a long while to come.
December 30, 2020
This is one of the more frustrating books I’ve read in a while. I was able to finish it, but whiskey helped at the end. I do not recommend this book.
I’m a former Midwestern farm kid and conservative Christian that is now a Bay Area queer atheist. This book was interesting to me as I had really enjoyed her previous work on the Fukushima tsunami and Buddhism, and I am always curious how my peers will react to Midwestern culture. This….this was not what I expected.
The kindest thing I can say about the book is the author decided to go have an Experience, without doing any previous research, and by the end neither understood what happened to her, nor had any insights of value to share. I truly do not understand how this was published.
One of the main questions of the book revolves around GMOs and organic farming. However, in 350 pages, the author is not able to discover what either is in any detail, nor what the actual argument is over. The author also seems very interested in Christianity, but decides to…just go? Without any research into what she might want to investigate? At the end she finally has a brief interview with a biblical scholar that clearly could have helped her with her thesis, but is relegated to a small section at the back.
If you are interested in this topic, and if my motivations in reading this mirror your own, I’d recommend reading “Meditations With Cows” by Shrive Stockton instead. A better book, and 248 pages instead of 350.
I’m a former Midwestern farm kid and conservative Christian that is now a Bay Area queer atheist. This book was interesting to me as I had really enjoyed her previous work on the Fukushima tsunami and Buddhism, and I am always curious how my peers will react to Midwestern culture. This….this was not what I expected.
The kindest thing I can say about the book is the author decided to go have an Experience, without doing any previous research, and by the end neither understood what happened to her, nor had any insights of value to share. I truly do not understand how this was published.
One of the main questions of the book revolves around GMOs and organic farming. However, in 350 pages, the author is not able to discover what either is in any detail, nor what the actual argument is over. The author also seems very interested in Christianity, but decides to…just go? Without any research into what she might want to investigate? At the end she finally has a brief interview with a biblical scholar that clearly could have helped her with her thesis, but is relegated to a small section at the back.
If you are interested in this topic, and if my motivations in reading this mirror your own, I’d recommend reading “Meditations With Cows” by Shrive Stockton instead. A better book, and 248 pages instead of 350.
February 27, 2021
This book is not farming or her attempts at learning farming, it's about her attempt to pick through race, identity, spirituality, and the feelings of entitlement many Americans have when it comes to Native culture despite the fact it's not theirs to claim. It's not that she doesn't accept the answers people give her about GMOs/Christianity/farming, it's that she's trying to understand what her book is really about, what the questions beneath her half-baked GMO question really are.
May 24, 2020
My review of Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s “American Harvest” is forthcoming in America Magazine, but I will say here that if you’re looking for a more nuanced, thoughtful portraiture of heartland U.S.A. and the cultural/political/religious divide we’re experiencing in the 21st century, this is the book for you!
January 4, 2024
This book is full of questions, consideration, respect, and doubt. It presents so much technical information on farming, wheat, and the history of America without it ever feeling clunky or too dense to be enjoyable. A wholly thought-provoking and exciting read that I’ll be thinking about for a long time. 🌾
May 31, 2020
A fascinating look at Middle America, known as "country" in the book, and how religion and race is woven together. Mockett takes us on a deeply emotional struggle that resonated with me. I finished the book with so many questions about what I believe and what I value as a "city" person, I suspect my mind will turn over for many weeks to come. After I watch a video of how a combine works.
May 5, 2020
I was disappointed in this book. Anyone with a farm background will find her knowledge of farming naive and eventually off-putting, as she never seems to really learn much and keeps repeating her lack of knowledge. She's glaringly wrong on some key facts as well, like insisting when she was a kid the "technology" didn't exist to offload combines mid-field with a tractor and grain buggy, so she didn't have much credibility with me in the end on the farm parts of the book.
The religious parts were way too long for me and I think needed tightening and a heavy edit. I would've given it only one star but somehow there was enough to keep me going to the end. Still, I only recommend this book for people who are interested in exploring Christian theology in fairly deep detail.
The religious parts were way too long for me and I think needed tightening and a heavy edit. I would've given it only one star but somehow there was enough to keep me going to the end. Still, I only recommend this book for people who are interested in exploring Christian theology in fairly deep detail.
June 3, 2020
Half of this book I liked; the other half I didn't care for. This book seems to have everything in it but the kitchen sink. It was long and sprawling, like the farmlands the author describes. It's city vs country; GMO vs organic; educated vs uneducated; white vs. every other race; evangelical Christianity vs. every other religion; real present farmers vs. absentee landlord farmers, etc. I enjoyed reading about the author's and the Wolgemuth crew's travels around the Midwest-Rocky Mountain part of the US. My husband and I travel in our RV and I've probably seen custom harvesters traveling with their heavy equipment in convoys, but I didn't realize what I was seeing. What I didn't like was the constant talk and musings about Christanity. It got very boring. I read this book during the peaceful protests and sometimes violent riots following the murder of George Floyd. I realized that the custom harvesters most likely voted for Trump. They are not bad people, according to the author, but have a different mindset that liberal urban voters can't understand. This is yet another type of divide in the US.
May 15, 2020
This is a beautifully written and extremely personal account of an urban woman’s journey through the rural farmlands of the great center of our country.
A farm owner, she nonetheless lives a citified life with her family in San Francisco. She sets out on this journey as a way to explore the country’s divide as well as to try and make sense of the conflicts within herself.
Her writing is clear and fair. Her great affection for the people she meets - whether she fully understands them or not - is clear with every word.
American Harvest is about God and America in the best possible way.
This is a book about the Heartland that should particularly appeal to city-folk.
As a city-folk, myself I was happy to spend time with these vividly drawn people and with the author herself.
This is an immensely readable and engaging book.
I highly recommend it.
A farm owner, she nonetheless lives a citified life with her family in San Francisco. She sets out on this journey as a way to explore the country’s divide as well as to try and make sense of the conflicts within herself.
Her writing is clear and fair. Her great affection for the people she meets - whether she fully understands them or not - is clear with every word.
American Harvest is about God and America in the best possible way.
This is a book about the Heartland that should particularly appeal to city-folk.
As a city-folk, myself I was happy to spend time with these vividly drawn people and with the author herself.
This is an immensely readable and engaging book.
I highly recommend it.
May 17, 2020
Though the title tagline in 'God, Country, and Farming in the Heartland' this book is really about belief, what people believe and why, and opens up conversations that go way beyond a wheat harvest, delving into race, class, religion, education, on and on. This is one of the most compassionate, thought-provoking books I've read in a long time. If anyone is looking for a perfect book-club selection, this is it. It a great book to read (it's well-written and wonderfully told), but an even better book to discuss.
August 24, 2020
***Potential Spoilers***
I picked up this book with a feeling of excitement and optimism, but ended up finishing it feeling disappointed and frustrated. Meandering and disjointed, Mockett enters her self-imposed challenge with a set of questions she is determined to answer. The folks she shares the journey with are however, by her own description, increasingly frustrated with her approach, and single mindedness in approaching this rigid set of questions. An example of this is Mockett's insistence on the question of GMOs, and why farmers welcome the use of GMOs with open arms, but reject other scientific breakthroughs that don't fit with their worlview. She encounters many people that offer their perspective willingly, however she continues to be unsatisfied with these answers (perhaps, I'd posit, because they don't fit in with *her* worldview). Unsurprisingly, her traveling companions don't "dig her vibe" and her research becomes more belabored as time continues. She ends the book in a way that seems to suggest some inner growth, however I found it interesting how little self-awareness she has throughout this experience. She enters a very sacred Tribal ritual with no research or context, thinking she is welcome because the Native people she encounters perceive her as an in-group (I highly doubt this is the case), when in fact, she commits a major faux-paus, and has an emotional breakdown because of it. She constantly relies on others to reassure her and explain things for her, rather than being an open-minded observer. In the end, she concludes with answers to her questions given by college scholars, not by those with firsthand experience she dedicated weeks of time with, and it begs the question why she is so quick to accept these answers, and not the ones reiterated across her journey in the Plains. Further, she attributes her challenges to assimilate to racism, when in fact, I think it has a lot to do with her inability to humble herself.
Ultimately, there were many parts in the book I truly enjoyed; I grew up in an Evangelistic family and the portions on religion were somewhat interesting, if not a little disarming and generalized at times. A good example of this is when Mockett compares being able to pick apart different Anabaptist groups the same way she is able to pick up the subtle differences in features in various Asian populations. Mockett approaches every interaction like this, as if it can easily be answered and dissected to come to a clean conclusion. While I enjoy the aspect of questioning and comparing various viewpoints, I admit it grew tiresome that Mockett is neither satisfied with the given answers, nor willing to change the questions themselves.
You'll likely be recommended this book if you enjoyed titles such as Educated or Hillbilly Elegy; personally, I don't know if American Harvest scratched that itch for me, but you may still enjoy the book if you enjoy excogitative narratives, and aren't too set on having a clean conclusion.
I picked up this book with a feeling of excitement and optimism, but ended up finishing it feeling disappointed and frustrated. Meandering and disjointed, Mockett enters her self-imposed challenge with a set of questions she is determined to answer. The folks she shares the journey with are however, by her own description, increasingly frustrated with her approach, and single mindedness in approaching this rigid set of questions. An example of this is Mockett's insistence on the question of GMOs, and why farmers welcome the use of GMOs with open arms, but reject other scientific breakthroughs that don't fit with their worlview. She encounters many people that offer their perspective willingly, however she continues to be unsatisfied with these answers (perhaps, I'd posit, because they don't fit in with *her* worldview). Unsurprisingly, her traveling companions don't "dig her vibe" and her research becomes more belabored as time continues. She ends the book in a way that seems to suggest some inner growth, however I found it interesting how little self-awareness she has throughout this experience. She enters a very sacred Tribal ritual with no research or context, thinking she is welcome because the Native people she encounters perceive her as an in-group (I highly doubt this is the case), when in fact, she commits a major faux-paus, and has an emotional breakdown because of it. She constantly relies on others to reassure her and explain things for her, rather than being an open-minded observer. In the end, she concludes with answers to her questions given by college scholars, not by those with firsthand experience she dedicated weeks of time with, and it begs the question why she is so quick to accept these answers, and not the ones reiterated across her journey in the Plains. Further, she attributes her challenges to assimilate to racism, when in fact, I think it has a lot to do with her inability to humble herself.
Ultimately, there were many parts in the book I truly enjoyed; I grew up in an Evangelistic family and the portions on religion were somewhat interesting, if not a little disarming and generalized at times. A good example of this is when Mockett compares being able to pick apart different Anabaptist groups the same way she is able to pick up the subtle differences in features in various Asian populations. Mockett approaches every interaction like this, as if it can easily be answered and dissected to come to a clean conclusion. While I enjoy the aspect of questioning and comparing various viewpoints, I admit it grew tiresome that Mockett is neither satisfied with the given answers, nor willing to change the questions themselves.
You'll likely be recommended this book if you enjoyed titles such as Educated or Hillbilly Elegy; personally, I don't know if American Harvest scratched that itch for me, but you may still enjoy the book if you enjoy excogitative narratives, and aren't too set on having a clean conclusion.
December 11, 2021
What this is not:
An ethnography. You don't get to know much about a sizable portion of the crew, probably because they don't seem to be willing participants in the project. The relationship that makes the book possible is that the head of the crew has cut crops on the author's family's farm for many years. He invites the author along, and she seems to have an amiable relationship with him and his family. The rest of the crew, however, presumably did not sign up to have the author tag along, not helping with the work but just observing them and questioning them, with the end goal of writing a book. She sounds less interested in learning about their lives than in getting them to respond to her preconceived questions about religion. She observes that crew members who are college-educated are more open to her than those who are not, but she isn't able to cross this line, possibly because she sounds rather pretentious. She emphasizes her family's love of rationality, and she waxes rhapsodic about batting around ideas in conversation with her family and with Juston, a crew member in college who discusses religion in depth with her. When the crew crosses into Nebraska, where her farm is, she hopes that going to her farm will soothe the tension she's felt, speaking as though the crew is a family on the outs. They are not a family. They are working for her (among other clients). She may have a genuinely affectionate relationship with Eric and his family, but that neither extends to the rest of the crew nor erases the business relationship.
A nonfiction book about farming or food politics. There *is* some information about farm equipment, cutting practices, and the like. Regarding food politics, the author is highly interested in farmers' perspectives on organic farming, but she funnels this through a contrived question about religion and GMOs. It's halfway through the book before she mentions any aspect of the organic labor other than GMOs, and she doesn't engage with environmental critiques of conventional farming, economic critiques of organic farming, or political critiques of the organic label. She describes feeding her son organic food due to a fuzzy sense that it's more pure than conventional, and she doubts this feeling after a farmer calls organic food just a marketing tactic, but she never does a real evaluation. At one point she describes farming as an old-fashioned hobby and ascribes this view to city people. That is not the view of the average city person, it's the view of a person whose family owns a hobby farm.
A theological exploration. This area seems quite personally important to the author, and it's where she most often references outside sources, but the main themes she returns to are 1) how literally to interpret the Bible and 2) emphasis on the vengeful Old Testament God versus the loving New Testament God. I'm not an expert here, but I think both of those are pretty well explored in scholarship.
A "bridge the political divide with empathy" book. Politics isn't often explicitly discussed, and the author seems invested in a polarized framework. She sees one major divide, a divide between city/country that is also a divide between atheist/Christian, intellectual/uneducated, and organic/conventional diets. She does not do a great job of recognizing nuance, in-between states, or common ground.
A discussion of traveling as a person of color in white America. Well, it is this, but it's limited. One of the thoughts that will stick with me is the author seeking out manicures in the larger cities she passes through, for the sake of visiting with the Vietnamese workers. In a few moments, it reminded me of Days of Distraction, a very different book but also involving an Asian-American woman traveling among whites. However, at one point the author is invited to a Native religious ceremony by two Native women working at a hotel she's staying at. She interprets this as a gesture of kindness from one person of color to another, but she also knows they may be assuming she has Native heritage, which she does not. At the ceremony, she makes a faux pas and leaves in a hurry. Reading more later, she concludes that she was wrong to attend and that it's wrong to write about it, but writing about it, in detail, is exactly what she does. This doesn't negate her own experiences, but it does make me skeptical of her skill at turning her experiences into a broader cultural critique.
A meditation on the natural beauty of the American West. There are a lot of landscape descriptions, many with overwrought language. In combination with the rest of the book, this began to feel like part of the author's tendency to polarize the city and the country. It didn't help that several times she says something about a sunset or landscape to the crew and is disappointed that they don't mirror her enthusiasm, which seems to be another way she looks down on them as not intellectual enough. It also doesn't help that she describes herself as starved for paintings, as though her time in the country is full of natural beauty while the city is where human artistry resides.
What this is:
Subtracting all of the above, what's left is mostly the author's family history, which is somewhat interesting, but probably not worth wading through all the rest.
An ethnography. You don't get to know much about a sizable portion of the crew, probably because they don't seem to be willing participants in the project. The relationship that makes the book possible is that the head of the crew has cut crops on the author's family's farm for many years. He invites the author along, and she seems to have an amiable relationship with him and his family. The rest of the crew, however, presumably did not sign up to have the author tag along, not helping with the work but just observing them and questioning them, with the end goal of writing a book. She sounds less interested in learning about their lives than in getting them to respond to her preconceived questions about religion. She observes that crew members who are college-educated are more open to her than those who are not, but she isn't able to cross this line, possibly because she sounds rather pretentious. She emphasizes her family's love of rationality, and she waxes rhapsodic about batting around ideas in conversation with her family and with Juston, a crew member in college who discusses religion in depth with her. When the crew crosses into Nebraska, where her farm is, she hopes that going to her farm will soothe the tension she's felt, speaking as though the crew is a family on the outs. They are not a family. They are working for her (among other clients). She may have a genuinely affectionate relationship with Eric and his family, but that neither extends to the rest of the crew nor erases the business relationship.
A nonfiction book about farming or food politics. There *is* some information about farm equipment, cutting practices, and the like. Regarding food politics, the author is highly interested in farmers' perspectives on organic farming, but she funnels this through a contrived question about religion and GMOs. It's halfway through the book before she mentions any aspect of the organic labor other than GMOs, and she doesn't engage with environmental critiques of conventional farming, economic critiques of organic farming, or political critiques of the organic label. She describes feeding her son organic food due to a fuzzy sense that it's more pure than conventional, and she doubts this feeling after a farmer calls organic food just a marketing tactic, but she never does a real evaluation. At one point she describes farming as an old-fashioned hobby and ascribes this view to city people. That is not the view of the average city person, it's the view of a person whose family owns a hobby farm.
A theological exploration. This area seems quite personally important to the author, and it's where she most often references outside sources, but the main themes she returns to are 1) how literally to interpret the Bible and 2) emphasis on the vengeful Old Testament God versus the loving New Testament God. I'm not an expert here, but I think both of those are pretty well explored in scholarship.
A "bridge the political divide with empathy" book. Politics isn't often explicitly discussed, and the author seems invested in a polarized framework. She sees one major divide, a divide between city/country that is also a divide between atheist/Christian, intellectual/uneducated, and organic/conventional diets. She does not do a great job of recognizing nuance, in-between states, or common ground.
A discussion of traveling as a person of color in white America. Well, it is this, but it's limited. One of the thoughts that will stick with me is the author seeking out manicures in the larger cities she passes through, for the sake of visiting with the Vietnamese workers. In a few moments, it reminded me of Days of Distraction, a very different book but also involving an Asian-American woman traveling among whites. However, at one point the author is invited to a Native religious ceremony by two Native women working at a hotel she's staying at. She interprets this as a gesture of kindness from one person of color to another, but she also knows they may be assuming she has Native heritage, which she does not. At the ceremony, she makes a faux pas and leaves in a hurry. Reading more later, she concludes that she was wrong to attend and that it's wrong to write about it, but writing about it, in detail, is exactly what she does. This doesn't negate her own experiences, but it does make me skeptical of her skill at turning her experiences into a broader cultural critique.
A meditation on the natural beauty of the American West. There are a lot of landscape descriptions, many with overwrought language. In combination with the rest of the book, this began to feel like part of the author's tendency to polarize the city and the country. It didn't help that several times she says something about a sunset or landscape to the crew and is disappointed that they don't mirror her enthusiasm, which seems to be another way she looks down on them as not intellectual enough. It also doesn't help that she describes herself as starved for paintings, as though her time in the country is full of natural beauty while the city is where human artistry resides.
What this is:
Subtracting all of the above, what's left is mostly the author's family history, which is somewhat interesting, but probably not worth wading through all the rest.
October 11, 2020
A love letter to landlord farming.
Astoundingly simplistic and completely lacking in any nuance. The author was completely unprepared for have any meaningful conversations with individuals who had very unique perspectives and experiences to speak on (where is Justin and Eric’s book about progressive theology? I’d read that). The binary perspective she maintained of city vs rural throughout the whole book was emblematic of her complete lack of perspective taking. There was no unique insight or interrogation of the agriculture industry (despite her antagonizing every single farmer and harvester by asking them why they don’t grow organic and then dismissing the economic considerations of their responses, which would have been a better read).
Wouldn’t recommend this to anyone, but I would actively dissuade anyone who has stepped foot on a farm from reading it. Her broad and often incorrect generalizations about rural communities were a bit offensive. And her lack of initiative to take an active role in this story was extremely off-putting. If there were any compliments I would give this book it is that for once the farmers and rural communities didn’t come off badly, all the city people did.
3 stars because the writing was aggressively fine and I did finish the book.
Astoundingly simplistic and completely lacking in any nuance. The author was completely unprepared for have any meaningful conversations with individuals who had very unique perspectives and experiences to speak on (where is Justin and Eric’s book about progressive theology? I’d read that). The binary perspective she maintained of city vs rural throughout the whole book was emblematic of her complete lack of perspective taking. There was no unique insight or interrogation of the agriculture industry (despite her antagonizing every single farmer and harvester by asking them why they don’t grow organic and then dismissing the economic considerations of their responses, which would have been a better read).
Wouldn’t recommend this to anyone, but I would actively dissuade anyone who has stepped foot on a farm from reading it. Her broad and often incorrect generalizations about rural communities were a bit offensive. And her lack of initiative to take an active role in this story was extremely off-putting. If there were any compliments I would give this book it is that for once the farmers and rural communities didn’t come off badly, all the city people did.
3 stars because the writing was aggressively fine and I did finish the book.
Read
July 17, 2020Marie Mutsuki Mockett grew up in California, but her family has owned a farm in Nebraska for generations. Her family’s harvester invited her to join his team as they travel from Texas north, following the ripening wheat. She wants to understand cultural differences between her secular, multi-cultural, organic-food-loving coastal friends and the white, evangelical, GMO-advocates among Midwestern farmers and harvesters. American Harvest is the story of her travels and an account of the conversations, church services, and harvesting sessions she experienced along the way. It’s a moving account of what it’s like to be a person of color traveling through the Midwest and a thoughtful, compassionate attempt to understand and bridge deep-rooted cultural divides.
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April 2, 2022
While this book is about a summer spent following a custom combining crew from Texas to Idaho, much of it is an exploration of the racial and religious and urban/rural differences between the author, a Japanese-American secular Buddhist urbanite has with the Mennonite crew of harvesters. She ponders differences within their Christianity by attending different types of Protestant evangelical churches as she travels with this very devout Christian family group and has serious religious discussions with those in the family who are willing to talk; others somewhat shun her. I felt I was able to get to know Marie Mutsuki Mockett well because of her vulnerable and open writing and the members of the crew who were willing to try and wrestle with her about the questions she was asking. An interesting book in so many ways.
June 20, 2020
I enjoyed this book immensely and was very impressed with the breadth and scope of the material that it covered, and of the author's previous knowledge and research. The description of farming machinery and methods, and of the land and soil, were detailed and clear. The descriptions of the problems with organic farming and GMO's was most helpful. The interactions between the crew members added spice to the daily routine.
The author's knowledge of theology and history of Christianity, especially about anabaptism, was more than I would have expected from a stated non-Christian. But her thoughtful and deep reactions to the variety of religious beliefs was so helpful. Her method of switching from subject to subject keeps the reader's interest high. After learning about farming methods and the soil; character development and relationships adds interest. The descriptions of land and scenery were beautifully done.
I must admit a slight prejudice as I grew up on a Kansas farm and am an extended member of the family the author traveled with. But besides its scope and depth, it shows a slice of Am. farm life that most people know nothing about. Thank you Marie and thank you to the Wolgemuth family.
Elaine Byer Reed
The author's knowledge of theology and history of Christianity, especially about anabaptism, was more than I would have expected from a stated non-Christian. But her thoughtful and deep reactions to the variety of religious beliefs was so helpful. Her method of switching from subject to subject keeps the reader's interest high. After learning about farming methods and the soil; character development and relationships adds interest. The descriptions of land and scenery were beautifully done.
I must admit a slight prejudice as I grew up on a Kansas farm and am an extended member of the family the author traveled with. But besides its scope and depth, it shows a slice of Am. farm life that most people know nothing about. Thank you Marie and thank you to the Wolgemuth family.
Elaine Byer Reed
July 31, 2021
I like the idea behind this book but I find that it came up short. I expected some nice examination of the heartland via one person's travels through it. I thought maybe it would touch on the religious nature of its residents and modern day agriculture. Instead we get a mish-mash of all 3. What could have made for two interesting books if they had been drawn out in more detail is both weak and watered downed and offers no greater insight into a unique part of the country.
Basically you can pass on this one.
Basically you can pass on this one.
August 23, 2020
A very interesting project that was undone by a lack of preparedness for the conversations about Christianity, and no substantive interrogation of the economic dimension of large industrial agriculture. So much of what Mockett and the characters malign regarding the hollowing out of the countryside is an outgrowth of the current economic realities of agriculture, and the mission towards consolidation and erosion of New Deal policies.
August 30, 2020
Not sure what to make of this. Despite many interesting bits of writing, the end result was just kind of an unformed lump of information. There are really no conclusions drawn from the topics covered, and no answers to the questions discussed. I don't really see the point of the book.
I found many aspects extremely frustrating. Discussing modern farming without mentioning climate change and water management? How is it even possible to gloss over those fundamental issues? There's a brief section about the farming monoculture, but the concerns are immediately dismissed by saying that farmers raise more than one crop. That's not the point at all. The point is that vast portions of the earth's surface have been converted from a diverse ecosystem of hundreds or thousands of species to just a few species, with disastrous consequences for wildlife, insects, invertebrates, and ultimately humans.
The questions around religion and politics, though discussed at length, are not really looked at in any depth. The slices of Christianity examined are likewise extremely narrow and superficial.
The book promised a lot more than it delivered. Very disappointing.
I found many aspects extremely frustrating. Discussing modern farming without mentioning climate change and water management? How is it even possible to gloss over those fundamental issues? There's a brief section about the farming monoculture, but the concerns are immediately dismissed by saying that farmers raise more than one crop. That's not the point at all. The point is that vast portions of the earth's surface have been converted from a diverse ecosystem of hundreds or thousands of species to just a few species, with disastrous consequences for wildlife, insects, invertebrates, and ultimately humans.
The questions around religion and politics, though discussed at length, are not really looked at in any depth. The slices of Christianity examined are likewise extremely narrow and superficial.
The book promised a lot more than it delivered. Very disappointing.
December 6, 2023
This book is solid, but it tries to dip into so many topics that it can’t possibly begin to unpack. There are many elements that are interesting, but without more time they feel a bit shoehorned.
That said, what content is included is thought provoking and has given me some things to think about, on the rural/urban divide, on race, on the relation we have to the stolen land we live on, and a variety of other topics.
That said, what content is included is thought provoking and has given me some things to think about, on the rural/urban divide, on race, on the relation we have to the stolen land we live on, and a variety of other topics.
March 12, 2020
More to come...
May 20, 2020
In a beautifully written and compellingly personal memoir, we are invited to connect across boundaries of geography, race and difference to see our human connection. Marie Mutsuki Mockett, herself a bridge between country and city, white and Japanese, farmer and intellectual, softens my hearts and gives me hope that there is a way to understand each other. Especially in this time where we need each other so much, this book is a balm for my soul.
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