Here I was thinking feijoas were a native New Zealand fruit, blessed taonga to some and wholeheartedly despised by others, only to have my world flipped upside down by Kate Evans’ exceptional, eye-opening novel Feijoa: A Story of Obsession and Belonging. This non-fiction beauty is full to the brim with information and stories, making the historian and social sciences academic in me sing and the avid reader feel immersed right from the get-go. Whether you love or hate them, there is so much more to a feijoa that you ever thought.

Inspired by a personal obsession with this singular exotic fruit, Feijoa is a sweeping, global tale about the dance between people and plants – how we need each other, how we change each other, and the surprising ways certain species make their way into our imaginations, our stomachs, and our hearts. The feijoa comes from the highlands of Southern Brazil and the valleys of Uruguay, where it was woven into indigenous and Afro-Brazilian cultures. It was scientifically named in Berlin, acclimatised on the French Riviera, and failed to make its fortune in California. Today, it is celebrated by one small town in the Colombian Andes, and has become an icon of community and nationhood in New Zealand. Of the world’s roughly 30,000 edible plant species, only around 150 are now cultivated for human consumption. Most of those were domesticated hundreds or thousands of years ago, but feijoas are among only a handful of plants that have made this journey from the wild to the orchard in the last few generations, providing a rare opportunity to watch, up close, the myriad ways plants seduce us. Feijoa is a book about connection. Between people and plants, between individuals, between cultures, across disciplines – it celebrates the ways our lives and loves intersect in surprising ways.

Throughout this post, I will be referring to the novel as Feijoa as that is how it is named in the blurb, but know that its full title is Feijoa: A Story of Obsession and Belonging, that way you can find it easier at libraries and bookstores.

Something that caught my eye as I was reading it was this line near the beginning: “It is no accident that the root word for ‘culture’ is ‘cultivation’. Evans goes on to add this excerpt from philosopher Edward S. Casey, “the very word culture meant ‘placed tilled’ in Middle English, and the same word goes back to the Latin colere, “to inhabit, care for, till, worship.” He went on to explain that to be cultural, to have culture, is to inhabit a place sufficiently intensely to cultivate it – to be responsible for it, to respond to it, to attend to it with care. This idea fascinates me as I then went to think about culture like a plant: the longer the people care for the culture and the upbringing of the generations with the knowledge and histories of the culture, the longer the roots have to dig into the soil, the stronger the culture and the community is, and the more it thrives. It’s a beautiful way to view culture, isn’t it?

You may be thinking ‘Anna, you’re posting this during your month of New Zealand books but its not a uniquely New Zealand thing. Why are you including this here?‘ In part, it is because of this cultural aspect and how it relates to te ao Māori. It is only in the last two to three generations that we have seen a resurgence in Māori culture, language, and representation in Aotearoa New Zealand. It put it lightly, the roots of Māori language and culture in Aotearoa New Zealand are still settling and there are those that are still trying to disturb the soil. This idea that caring for the culture, sharing it with the tamariki (children) so they can look after it too, and collectively looking after the Māori culture like a growing plant, resonates with me so much, and I wanted to include Feijoa alongside the Māori novels for that reason.

My other reason is that we are not the only ones who have such a connection with the green fruit. Feijoas originate in South America, grown across various regions in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and across the South American continent. The culture of the feijoa is not restricted to Aotearoa, and as such the number of people who enjoy them (or hate them) is far larger than the 5 million people living in this beautiful part of the South Pacific. This fruit can bridge borders and gaps between cultures, cultivating new connections and relationships, and bring together people from across the globe. Evans concludes her prologue by stating that along her research journey, she found something special:

“I found…people with a strong love of plants and of place, whose obsession with this one particular fruit was an expression of their care for the land they walked on and their love for the people around them. Plants change us, even as we change them – and in the feijoa’s case, it revealed more to me than I ever could have expected.”

I hope you pick up Feijoa and dive into this wonderful, informative, surprising read. It is something I never thought I would pick up, but I have thoroughly enjoyed it. I think its safe to assume I earn brownie points with my PhD friends in Hospitality and Tourism too!