Survival Food: North Woods Stories by a Menominee Cook (Paperback)

Description

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An intimate and engaging Native food memoir

In these coming-of-age tales set on the Menominee Indian Reservation of the 1980s and 1990s, Thomas Pecore Weso explores the interrelated nature of meals and memories. As he puts it, “I cannot separate foods from the moments in my life when I first tasted them.” Weso’s stories recall the foods that influenced his youth in northern Wisconsin: subsistence meals from hunted, fished, and gathered sources; the culinary traditions of the German, Polish, and Swedish settler descendants in the area; and the commodity foods distributed by the government—like canned pork, dried beans, and powdered eggs—that made up the bulk of his family’s pantry. His mom called this “survival food.”

These stories from the author’s teen and tween years—some serious, some laugh-out-loud funny—will take readers from Catholic schoolyards to Native foot trails to North Woods bowling alleys, while providing Weso’s perspective on the political currents of the era. The book also contains dozens of recipes, from turtle soup and gray squirrel stew to twice-baked cheesy potatoes. This follow-up to Weso’s Good Seeds: A Menominee Indian Food Memoir is a hybrid of modern foodways, Indigenous history, and creative nonfiction from a singular storyteller.

About the Author

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Thomas Pecore Weso (1953–2023) was an author, educator, artist, and enrolled member of the Menominee Indian Nation of Wisconsin. His book Good Seeds: A Menominee Indian Food Memoir, published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press in 2016, was reviewed widely and won a national Gourmand Award. He also wrote many articles and personal essays, a biography of Langston Hughes with coauthor Denise Low, and the children’s book Native American Stories for Kids (Rockridge Press, 2022), which was named a 2023 Kansas Notable Book. Weso was an alumnus of Haskell Indian Nations University and the University of Kansas, where he earned a master’s degree in Indigenous studies. He died in Sonoma County, California, on July 14, 2023.