Terroir

By: Natasha Sajé

Eight essays exploring how identity is shaped by place and its people.

The word "terroir" refers to the climate and soil in which something is grown. In this essay collection, Natasha Sajé applies this idea to people and their relationships, exploring in particular how the immigrant experience has shaped her identity. As she revisits people and literature across her life, she plumbs the language through the lens of place, which becomes a powerful, grounding motif: her experiences as the child of European refugees in suburban New Jersey, taken under the wing a widowed neighbor; a winter spent waitressing in Switzerland; her marriage to a Jamaican man in Baltimore; and finally her marriage to a woman in Salt Lake City. Sajé's essays offer incisive commentary on nationality, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and class. Hers are not tales of melancholy or victimization but rather stories of human understanding. Taken as a whole, the essays ask how terroir creates identity, reminding us that change is constant in our lives.