Bread for the Living, Bread for the Dead

Bread for the Living, Bread for the Dead gathers eight perspectives on the role of bread in human culture. The focus is the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. Each piece is a personal reflection, not part of a shared thesis or method.

The contributors work come from a wide range of disciplines: film, curation, anthropology, fiction, translation studies, art history, sociology, and conservation. That range shows up in how differently each approaches the subject.

One piece draws together the words of Sumerian farmers from nearly four thousand years ago and twentieth-century migrant wheat harvesters in Turkey. Another describes Sardinian carasau bread: so thin and crisp that making it properly takes at least three women working in coordination. Done right, it can last for months in a shepherd's satchel. Still others explain the five loaves prepared for memorial services in Greek Orthodox villages, or a reverence for bread so absolute that a dropped piece must be picked up, blown on, crossed, kissed, and eaten. No crumb is spit out. No bread is ever thrown away.

Most of these perspectives come from outside the usual American and Western European frame. That's part of what makes the collection distinct.

Paperback. Photographs and line drawings.