Description: "Naturalist, forager, and educator Maria Pinto offers a stunning debut book that uncovers strange and beautiful fungal connections between the natural and human worlds. She mingles reportage, research, memoir, and nature writing, touching on topics that range from Black farmers' domestication of the unforgettable aroma of truffles to the history of mycological poisons wielded by enslaved people against their enslavers. Pinto brings a new perspective and a distinctive literary voice to this mix of environmental and lived history, and every page sings with her enthusiasm for the networks in which we are embedded: fungal, ecological, ancestral, and communal. Join her in pursuit of beautiful, perplexing, delicious, and deadly mushrooms as she explores this understudied kingdom's awe-inspiring diversity and discovers how fungi have been used by people, especially those on the margins, for survival, pleasure, revelation, and revolution"-- Provided by publisher.
Brief description: Maria Pinto is a Boston-area writer, mycophile, and educator who was born in Jamaica and grew up in South Florida.
Review Quotes: "This delectably provocative fungal sampling gives the reader much to savor. . . . Even the most mycophobic would have a hard time reading her essays without falling a little in love with her alternately forbidding and thrilling subjects."--Kirkus Reviews, STARRED review