Santa Clara City Library

Join us for a book club-style discussion of Santa Clara's Big Read for 2025-2026: Bite by Bite by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. Registration is not required for this event. Please email librarians@santaclaraca.gov with any questions.

About the book: In Bite by Bite, poet and essayist Aimee Nezhukumatathil explores the way food and drink evoke our associations and remembrances—a subtext or layering, a flavor tinged with joy, shame, exuberance, grief, desire, or nostalgia. Nezhukumatathil restores our astonishment and wonder about food through her encounters with a range of foods and food traditions. From shave ice to lumpia, mangoes to pecans, rambutan to vanilla, she investigates how food marks our experiences and identities and explores the boundaries between heritage and memory. Bite by Bite offers a rich and textured kaleidoscope of vignettes and visions into the world of food and nature, drawn together by intimate and humorous personal reflections, with Fumi Nakamura's gorgeous imagery and illustration.

About the NEA Big Read: The National Endowment for the Arts Big Read—a partnership with Arts Midwest—broadens our understanding of ourselves and our neighbors through the power of a shared reading experience. The goals of the NEA Big Read are to inspire meaningful conversations, celebrate local creativity, elevate a wide variety of voices and perspectives, and build stronger connections in each community.

NEA Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest. Special thanks to The Santa Clara City Library Foundation and Friends for facilitating this grant.

Your attendance at this program grants permission to the City of Santa Clara to take your photograph and/or your child's photograph for marketing purposes.