Aimee Nezhukumatathil is not one to sugarcoat the past.
Take vanilla, for example — that heady, aromatic stem taking you back to sickly sweet children’s birthday cake or that scented lotion you had as a teen. But Nezhukumatathil writes about baking with her young son, creating vanilla extract with vodka to give as gifts, carefully scraping the seeds out of their pod with the dull side of a knife. The essay — one of 40 in her new book, “Bite by Bite” — isn’t just about her son, or vanilla. It’s also about Edmond Albios, an enslaved boy who discovered a new way to pollinate the vanilla orchids in a way that changed the vanilla industry. Vanilla is the vehicle through which her parallels are drawn.