David Mas Masumoto – författare

David Mas Masumoto, best-selling author of Epitaph for a Peach, returns to the same ground but digs even deeper in a new, "more ambitious book" in which "he lets his philosophy about man and nature emerge from an absorbing chronicle of his life and that of his Japanese antecedents" (The Economist). This is a book about working alongside the ghosts of generations past, about the search for roots in the tragic history of internment camps and in the rural culture of Japan. It is equally about renewal-reinvigorating the farm with organic techniques, teaching his children how to carry on the work that eighty acres of peaches and grapes demand. Masumoto knits past and present to achieve a rare and essential harmony: holding on to what matters, despite the pressures of time and change. "Take your time, linger" with the book, counsels the San Diego Union-Tribune, "Masumoto's serene tales . . . are like a balm." He is a "remarkable" author, sums up The Atlantic, "with a field, and a sensibility, peculiarly his own."

Rushing from one thing to another, we lose sight of the art of living, which for California farmer David Mas Masumoto is also the art of farming. Not fast farming, of the kind that produces fast food, but slow farming, the kind that notices each change of light and temperature and produces peaches with juice that runs down your chin.On the farm, appreciating the fruits of one's own labor requires all the senses: smell that knows when a peach is ready to be picked; sight that observes the health of a season's crop; touch that measures the weight of a fruit; hearing that recognizes each voice that calls out across the fields; and taste that savors the refreshing tang of a fruit at that perfect moment of ripeness. Taking us into his fields to witness the cycle of the harvest, Masumoto reminds us that we must stop living on the run in order to savor the world around us.

It was when David Mas Masumoto''s father had a stroke on the sprawling fields of their farm that the son looked with new eyes on the land where he and generations of his family have toiled for decades. Masumoto -- an organic farmer working the land in California''s Central Valley -- farms stories as he farms peaches. In Wisdom of the Last Farmer, an impassioned memoir of revitalization and redemption, he finds the natural connections between generation and succession, fathers and children, booms and declines as he tells the story of his family and their farm. He brings us to the rich earth of America''s Fruit Basket, under the vine trellises and canes where grapes are grown, and to the fruit orchards flush with green before harvest, where he uncovers and preserves the age-old wisdom that is fast disappearing in our modern, information-driven world -- and that is urgently needed in this time of food crises and social disruption. Masumoto sees the price the family has paid to grow complex heirloom peaches -- when the market rewards tasteless, big, and red fruits -- and the challenges of maintaining traditions and integrity while working in the modern, high-pressure agricultural marketplace. As his father''s health declines along with the profitability of the family farm, Masumoto has the further hard work of nursing his father back to health -- becoming master to the teacher who once schooled him -- and is driven beyond economic concerns to even larger questions of life, death, and renewal. In his gorgeous, lyrical prose, Masumoto conjures the realities of farming life while weaving in the history of American agriculture over the past century, encapsulating universal themes of work along with wisdom that could be gleaned only from the earth. By the end of the workday, he understands the feeling of accomplishment when you''ve done your best...and discovers that it''s when he lets go -- of both his father and control of nature -- that wisdom manifests itself. And, when Masumoto''s daughter intends to return to the family farm, hope is found in the generations. In the quiet eloquence of Wisdom of the Last Farmer, you will see how your own destiny is involved in the future of your food, the land, and the farm.

David Mas Masumoto works a family farm, growing organic peaches, nectarines, and grapes. When Masumoto’s father has a stroke on the fields of their eighty-acre farm, Masumoto confronts life’s big questions: What do his and his father’s lives mean? What have they lived and worked for? “A fiercely tender book” (Deborah Madison), Wisdom of the Last Farmer “tells the most fascinating kind of story, reminding us that, at its best and most authentic, organic farming requires not only soul, but intimate knowledge of place, a deep grasp of subjects ranging from plant physiology to tractor repair, and unrelenting physical labor” (onEarth magazine). In the harvest of his father’s wisdom, and his own, gathered from a lifetime of farming and surviving, Mas finds the natural connections between generation and succession and life, death, and renewal. He tells how to tend and make things grow, and how to know when to let nature take over, weaving together stories of life and death to reveal age-old wisdom in what the The Oregonian called a “sweet taste of farming, family, loyalty, and dignity.” With insights full of beautiful, lyrical descriptions on how to nurture both the tangible and intangible, Masumoto’s quiet eloquence reveals how our own destinies are involved in the future of our food, the land, and the farm.

I discover a "lost" aunt, separated from ourfamily due to racism and discrimination against the disabled. She had a mentaldisability due to childhood meningitis. She was taken away in 1942 when allJapanese Americans were considered the enemy and imprisoned. She then became a"ward" of the state. We believed she had died, but 70 years laterfound her alive and living a few miles from our family farm. How did she survive?Why was she kept hidden? How did both shame and resilience empower my family toforge forward in a land that did not want them? I am haunted and driven toexplore my identity and the meaning of family—especially as farmers tied to theland. I uncover family secrets that bind us to a sense of history buried in theearth that we work and a sense of place that defines us.

I discover a "lost" aunt, separated from our family due to racism and discrimination against the disabled. She had a mental disability due to childhood meningitis. She was taken away in 1942 when all Japanese Americans were considered the enemy and imprisoned. She then became a "ward" of the state. We believed she had died, but 70 years later found her alive and living a few miles from our family farm. How did she survive? Why was she kept hidden? How did both shame and resilience empower my family to forge forward in a land that did not want them? I am haunted and driven to explore my identity and the meaning of family—especially as farmers tied to the land. I uncover family secrets that bind us to a sense of history buried in the earth that we work and a sense of place that defines us.