AMERICAN HARVEST
God, Country, and Farming in the Heartland
For over one hundred years, the Mockett family has owned a seven-thousand-acre wheat farm in Nebraska, where Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s father was raised. Mockett, who grew up in 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.
At the invitation of Eric Wolgemuth, the conservative farmer who has cut her family’s fields for decades, Mockett accompanies a group of evangelical wheat harvesters through the heartland as they follow the trail of ripening wheat from Texas to Idaho. Together they contemplate what Eric refers to as “the divide,” peeling back layers of the American story to expose its contradictions and unhealed wounds.
For over one hundred years, the Mockett family has owned a seven-thousand-acre wheat farm in Nebraska, where Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s father was raised. Mockett, who grew up in 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.
At the invitation of Eric Wolgemuth, the conservative farmer who has cut her family’s fields for decades, Mockett accompanies a group of evangelical wheat harvesters through the heartland as they follow the trail of ripening wheat from Texas to Idaho. Together they contemplate what Eric refers to as “the divide,” 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 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 powerful book attempts to reconcile competing versions of our national story.
- Graywolf Press
- Paperback
- April 2021
- 416 Pages
- 9781644450512
Buy the Book
$17.00
About Marie Mutsuki Mockett
Marie Mutsuki Mockett is the author of a novel, Picking Bones from Ash, and a memoir, Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye, which was a finalist for the PEN Open Book Award. She has written for the New York Times, Salon, National Geographic, Glamour, Ploughshares, and other publications and has been a guest on The World, Talk of the Nation and All Things Considered on NPR. She is a core faculty member of the Rainier Writing Workshop and a Visiting Writer in the MFA program Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, California. She lives in San Francisco.
Praise
“Mockett, writing with a gentle self-consciousness, offers a compassionate portrait of conservative evangelicals, along with lucid musings on agricultural science, Native American history, and the quiet majesty of the Great Plains.”—The New Yorker
“A revealing, richly textured portrait of the lives of those who put food on our tables.”—Kirkus Reviews
“[American Harvest is] by turns a woman’s travelogue of the Great Plains, a sweeping history of the American West, and a cross-sectional study of contemporary Christian theology.”—Bookforum
“[Marie Mutsuki Mockett] has the kind of deft touch with the English language that would make me read a book by her, no matter what it was about. . . . At the end of the trip, Mutsuki Mockett bemoans the fact that she wants her ‘old self to reappear’—but it won’t. The Midwest has changed her. That, perhaps, is her greatest talent: the willingness to examine, even abandon, her own biases before she casts stones.”—Financial Times
“A sprawling examination of American history, identity, and food. . . . [American Harvest is] a masterclass of reporting with humility.”—The Believer
“This magnificent book took me on a journey I knew nothing about, following a crew of wheat harvesters from Texas to Idaho. Machinery, birds, geology, churches, debates, friendships, histories, an eclipse, it’s all here, seen and offered with gentle questioning and so much heart.”—Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning
Discussion Questions
1. Early in the book, Eric Wolgemuth identifies “the divide” as a prominent feature of contemporary American life. What are some examples of that divide? What groups or ideas stand on either side of it? Do you agree that it’s an accurate description of the society we live in?
2. Throughout her journey, Mockett listens closely as various people describe their personal experience of faith. What are some of the different ideas she encounters about what being a “good Christian” means?
3. Mockett asks her family early in the book, “Why are our farmers and harvesters, who are conservative Christians, okay with GMOs, while people in the city, who believe in evolution, are obsessed with organic food?” (14). What answers does Mockett find, if any?
4. How does Mockett’s experience as a woman of color play an integral part in her journey with the harvesters? Were you surprised by the direction or shape taken by her discussions about race with the people she encounters?
5. On page 52, Marie asks Juston “Did you always doubt?” In what ways are Juston and Marie similar, particularly regarding their journeys around belief? In what ways do their approaches remain different?
6. How does Mockett’s presence on the crew either create or exacerbate certain tensions? Do you think she could have done something differently? Did she succeed in bridging Eric’s “divide”?
7. American Harvest pays close attention to the ways our preconceptions might get in the way of understanding complex realities. Did reading the book change the ways you think about any or all of the below? If so, how?
- organic food
- farming
- the heartland
- religion
8. Mockett spends considerable time on the road, meeting new people and engaging them in conversation. Can you think of any questions or topics you wish you could similarly explore, simply by going out and talking to new people?
9. What are some of the ways that Mockett has changed by the end of the book? What are some of the ways Eric and Juston Wolgemuth have changed?
10. How does the epigraph from Nikki Giovanni encapsulate the themes of Mockett’s journey?