By Kevin Brown
In C. Pam Zhang’s second novel, Land of Milk and Honey, Zhang creates a dystopian world where the focus isn’t on what has caused the dystopia, though it sets the background for everything that happens in the novel. There is a smog—caused by pollution-induced climate change—that has covered much of the world, leading to the dying off of most plants and animals. As such, food has become a scarce quantity, with only a grayish flour developed in a lab helping people survive. However, the world has not changed in one important way: the wealthy still have a way to get food (as well as its attendant safety and security).
The main character, an unnamed woman, does not belong among their elite ranks, but she has the opportunity to join them in the titular land of milk and honey (the top of a mountain on the border of Italy and France where sunlight is still able to get through), when she applies for a job as a chef in a small community run by a mysterious man. She has worked in kitchens before, but she exaggerates her talents and experience in order to leave the situation she’s in and to have the chance not only to cook real food again, but to eat it, as well. While it seems she gets the job because she can cook well enough for the owner and his daughter, they seem to have other reasons for hiring her—namely, her appearance, coupled with her lax moral compass and desperation.
The owner and his daughter, Aida, have not only created a community of the one percent; they are working on animals and plants to restore ecodiversity to the world in the hopes of saving the food supply. To do so, though, they need continued funding from the extremely wealthy and require local politicians to continue to turn a blind eye to their questionable science. Thus, they need the narrator to play the role of Eun-Young, the owner’s Korean wife who has left them, as she was always the one able to make an emotional connection to their work.
The narrator, who is of Chinese ancestry, doesn’t believe the ruse will work, but the owner tells her, “You are practiced in lying about yourself. . . . It is an advantage that they cannot tell you people apart.” The narrator knows the truth of his statement and, in order to keep the job, agrees to play the role, a decision that leads her to begin questioning who she is on an existential level. She realizes she has been playing roles much of her life, especially as a woman: “I remembered how to perform. Yes when I meant no. Lust or satisfaction or pleasure. Gratitude, as required, knowing that, naked beneath a man’s disappointment, there lay this possibility of violence, as pungent and close-fitting as skin.” As with wealth, inequality due to gender and ethnicity haven’t changed in this new world, either.
One of the ways the narrator tries to define herself is through a relationship that becomes more and more problematic as the book progresses. As she learns more about her lover and the reality of where she is, she will ultimately have to choose between love and blindness, a decision that reaches a high point in a climactic scene in a nearby city, away from the promised land. That scene helps her not only realize the truth about her lover, but about herself, the world (with or without the smog), and the vast inequities that are always beneath the surface, even when they’re not clear to observers. The narrator has chosen to ignore these realities even before coming to the land of milk and honey, but such an extreme situation forces her to see the world for what it is.
That’s what a dystopian novel should do, as Zhang wants readers to ask these questions about our world as it currently is, not just what it would become. She delves into concerns about a variety of injustices–the significant divide between rich and the poor, especially in terms of food, but with privilege, in general; the exotification of Asian women; and political corruption, among others–and helps readers see these issues anew, leading them to interrogate their own complicity. As Aida says at one point, “We are the most destructive predators ever seen…. Me, too. All of us.” Even in the promised land, there are still humans who will wreck the world; there is no need for invading peoples to come and destroy it. The seeds of destruction are wherever humans are. Zhang reminds readers of that reality, while creating characters readers can invest in and care about, giving hope that love might overcome such realities.
Land of Milk and Honey is available from The Book Nook, Bookshop, Eastwind Books, Green Apple Books, Loyalty Bookstore, and Vroman’s Bookstore.
Kevin Brown is a high school English teacher, book reviewer, and freelance writer in Nashville, TN. He’s published three books of poetry, a memoir, and a scholarly work. You can find out more about him and his work on Twitter at @kevinbrownwrite or on his website.