Chapter 17 - Cultivating Nature

Summary

In Chapter 17, “Cultivating Nature,” Shiuhhuah Serena Chou analyzes the development of farming literature from Virgil’s ancient didactic poem The Georgics to the contemporary writing of authors like Wendell Berry. The chapter begins with a timely analysis of the agricultural origins of the novel coronavirus pandemic and of the pandemic’s xenophobic representations in the media and political discourse. Chou connects the pandemic to modern industrial agriculture and turns to farming literature for alternative imaginings of humanity’s relationship to the land and food production. Chou illuminates how farm writing in the Anthropocene moves beyond the pastoral-georgic binary that structures earlier examples of the genre, analyzing the works of David Mas Masumoto, his wife Marcy, and his daughter Nikiko as paradigmatic examples.