Farm City Connecting to Themes in 13 Ways of Seeing Nature in LA
“Farm City” is a personal narrative written by Novella Carpenter chronicling her experience as an urban farmer in a run-down, impoverished neighborhood in Oakland. She relates her experience with farming and interacting with the people in the neighborhood, as well as the ways in which her farm, her neighbors and her neighborhood interact. Carpenter effectively uses narrative to display some of the main concepts relating to urban nature that already occupy public consciousness as identified by Jennifer Price in “Thirteen Ways of Seeing Nature in LA.” These themes include consumerism, poverty, and urban and “natural” ecosystems. However, her personal narrative style fails to extend …show more content…
When she first tours her future house, she observed that in her neighborhood, there were no real supermarkets, only liquor stores and fast food chain restaurants (Carpenter 9). When she goes into a store she observes that it “had two aisles. Gum, candy, chips, cans of beans, and plastic bags of past were on one shelf; the other was devoted to alcohol” (Carpenter 59). However, she observes these things mostly to illuminate the conditions in the neighborhood to which she moves, failing to conjecture how difficult it must be to get food if you happen to live in a neighborhood like this and do not have the time to drive to a supermarket or start a farm. Furthermore, when people who live in Carpenter’s neighborhood come and harvest some of the food in her garden, she calls them “annoying” for picking the wrong things and implies they are greedy when they harvest a lot. However, she fails to realize the scarcity of fresh food available to people in neighborhoods like the one in which she lives, again alienating a large group of people who aren’t as privileged as she
“Farm City” is a personal narrative written by Novella Carpenter chronicling her experience as an urban farmer in a run-down, impoverished neighborhood in Oakland. She relates her experience with farming and interacting with the people in the neighborhood, as well as the ways in which her farm, her neighbors and her neighborhood interact. Carpenter effectively uses narrative to display some of the main concepts relating to urban nature that already occupy public consciousness as identified by Jennifer Price in “Thirteen Ways of Seeing Nature in LA.” These themes include consumerism, poverty, and urban and “natural” ecosystems. However, her personal narrative style fails to extend …show more content…
When she first tours her future house, she observed that in her neighborhood, there were no real supermarkets, only liquor stores and fast food chain restaurants (Carpenter 9). When she goes into a store she observes that it “had two aisles. Gum, candy, chips, cans of beans, and plastic bags of past were on one shelf; the other was devoted to alcohol” (Carpenter 59). However, she observes these things mostly to illuminate the conditions in the neighborhood to which she moves, failing to conjecture how difficult it must be to get food if you happen to live in a neighborhood like this and do not have the time to drive to a supermarket or start a farm. Furthermore, when people who live in Carpenter’s neighborhood come and harvest some of the food in her garden, she calls them “annoying” for picking the wrong things and implies they are greedy when they harvest a lot. However, she fails to realize the scarcity of fresh food available to people in neighborhoods like the one in which she lives, again alienating a large group of people who aren’t as privileged as she