PROCESSED MEATS

A scattershot yet engaging essay collection about a host of personal and global concerns.

Walker takes on a variety of topics, including the specter of the apocalypse (real or imagined) in the time of the 2020 pandemic, but the primary themes are motherhood, climate change, home, and, above all, our relationship with food. Though the earliest essays date back to the eve of the year 2000, they seldom feel dated. The author has many notable achievements, not least frequent appearances of her work in the Best American Essays series, but the narrative style may not appeal to all readers. Walker caroms from subject to subject—often tenuously connected—only to double back, in one case moving from the history of the Latter-day Saints migration to her withered tomato plants to human infertility in the space of two sentences. While these interjections and digressions are sometimes effective, it’s distracting when it becomes the main structural motif of many pieces. When Walker settles in, she produces observations as beautifully written as they are thoughtful. One of her specialties is pithy remarks, and some of her more intriguing phrasing causes us to view certain topics from unique angles. “Fried chicken,” she writes, “is a testament to the beauty of the disarticulated chicken. Every piece a handhold. Every piece its own integrity. The coating wraps a thigh like snow, a breast like a scarf, a leg like a stocking to protect it from the cruel world of hot oil.” On matters ecological, Walker’s book is allied with such recent works as Sandra Goldmark’s Fixation, noting that catchphrases and words from the counterculture have entered the mainstream lexicon. Some, alas, have been commodified. Meanwhile, the pandemic has caused many middle-class families to experience elements of real poverty. This, in turn, has revealed what the author believes are “fundamental flaws” of a capitalistic society. Yet as a consumer, she also feels a measure of guilt for her own inconsistencies of judgment and desire.

An effective illumination of the profound “difference between right thought and right action.”