I got this as an arc on Netgalley and it will come out in November. This is an important read. I personally struggled following along because it jumped between subjects back and forward quickly and repeatedly but I do recommend. Just take in consideration that this is a "few pages at a time" book.

I read Fresh Banana Leaves earlier this year and commented that it read a bit like an MA dissertation, it seemed like an interesting theme but felt repetitive and without any real substance.
Well, I'm afraid this is more of the same.
I'll still give this three stars because it isn't a terrible book but if you have read Fresh Banana Leaves first and are now reading Growing Papaya Trees, you will be disappointed. It doesn't really talk about Indigenous solutions for climate change... It just says again and again that they are needed and that Indigenous people are being displaced from their Land (always with a capital L). Because she aims for a somewhat universal message, Jessica Hernandez doesn't go really into detail about her own history - briefly mentions her father from El Salvador, her mother from Oxaoca, both exiled Indigenous, and her grandmother slicing papaya... But I found that by trying so hard to provide a book that reads universally, it becomes so vague that I lost interest.
It was a disappointment and I wouldn't recommend it, especially if you have already read Fresh Banana Leaves.

3/5 stars
Recommended if you like: nonfiction, short reads, immigration stories

This review has been posted to Goodreads as of 7/15 and will be posted to Instagram 8/14 and to my review blog 9/25.

This book should really just be titled Growing Papaya Trees, because there was almost nothing about climate change, let alone solutions, within its pages. I came into this book expecting to read about an Indigenous and Global South perspective on climate change and climate change solutions, with topics touching on migration, conflict, etc. Instead this is roughly 280 pages of Dr. Hernandez talking about what it's like to be Indigenous and in the diaspora, which is fine if that's what the book is meant to be about. But that's not what was advertised here.

This book is split into six chapters, each of which focuses on a topic like "Our Land" or "Our Seedlings (Youth)"...except not really. Based on the chapter titles, I was expecting the first half of the book to lay out some of the current problems Indigenous people in the Global South are facing as a result of climate change, and the second half of the book to lay out potential solutions or examples of successful climate activism. What happened instead was that virtually all six chapters were mirrors of each other, where Dr. Hernandez discusses one or both of her cultures; the struggles her parents had with migration; how conflict, colonialism, and genocide impacted her matrilineal and patrilineal Lands (yes, every singly time land is mentioned in this book it's capitalized); what it's like being Indigenous in the diaspora; and then she usually includes a memory or two of hers. Also the obligatory papaya tree metaphor...in every chapter (you would not believe how many ways she can use papaya trees as a metaphor).

The contents of this book are important, but frankly I'm not sure they belong in a book about climate change when the author does very little to actually connect her stories to climate change. She mentions that climate caused her mother to have to walk further to get water and firewood, and she drops in that climate change was a factor in leading her parents to migrate, but she doesn't ever really examine that or help readers who have not experienced similar things understand what climate factors were in play that led to that decision.

There were only two chapters that really touched on climate change, neither of which really bothered to offer solutions, either traditional, mainstream, or innovative. These two chapters talk briefly about climate change and its impacts, and briefly about the solutions, before circling back around to conflict and migration. In fact, Dr. Hernandez is really pessimistic about climate action, and I found myself growing irritated with the way she was framing current solutions. Are there sustainability and ethics problems with electric cars and wind farms? Absolutely, and people should absolutely be aware of them, but you can't just shit all over these solutions, suggest people who use them aren't 'doing enough,' and then refuse to propose alternatives. To be fair, she criticizes fossil fuels too, but I almost feel as if she mainly targets renewables rather than fossil fuels, and I'm left wondering what exactly she expects? Don't use current renewables because they're problematic, but don't use fossil fuels because they cause climate change. Okay, sure.

Beyond my issue with this being framed as a climate change + climate solution book when it's very much not, I also found this book to be extremely repetitive. I summarize the contents of each chapter above, and I am not joking when I say that basically every single chapter is formatted in this way in basically the exact same order. We hear 5-6 times over how finding cultural foods in the diaspora is difficult. We hear 5-6 over how it's extremely difficult to leave your Land and how it's even more difficult if you're Indigenous because of your connection to your Land. Again, I do think these topics are important and I actually would be interested in hearing more about it, but the sheer repetitiveness of this book made me start to skim read just so I could finish it. Likewise, while I know this is an ARC and some mistakes will be here that won't be in the final, but there were whole sentences and paragraphs repeated in certain places. Usually it would be back-to-back, but in some cases the sentence/paragraph was repeated with some text in between, making me wonder if there wasn't some copy-and-pasting going on. Also I came across multiple sentence fragments (and she called Latin America a country, it's a region).

I think this book has the potential to be a good read, but only with some additional editing. For starters, scrap the 'focus' on climate change. This is not a book about that. Instead, keep the focus on the overarching papaya tree metaphor (but for the love of god cut down on the number of times you actually use the metaphor) and instead address the impact of being Indigenous and a migrant. This is not a perspective that you see very often and I think Dr. Hernandez has some really good points to make, but the way this book is written means those points are lost in the sauce. If she instead used the six chapters to focus on an aspect of Indigeneity and migration, such as connection with homeland(s), culture in the diaspora, coming from Latin America but not being Latine, etc., then this could be a very powerful and moving book. There could still even be a chapter on how climate change is impacting the Global South and the Indigenous peoples living there. But if the book were to be structured in this way, I think a lot of the repetitiveness would be taken care of, and the framing would be tightened into a much more impactful narrative.

What a powerful and necessary read for everyone...young or old, Indigenous or non-Indigenous. Dr. Jessica Hernandez writes with clarity, heart, and deep knowledge, offering not just a look at the climate crisis, but a call to reconnect with land, culture, and community. ...

It’s a reminder of how deeply connected Indigenous cultures are to the Land, and how that connection shapes care, responsibility, and legacy.
From the very beginning, in the section titled A Love Letter to Our Ancestral Lands, she writes, “Our Lands will never forget us. Our Lands will remember our love and respect, which will be our legacy,” (Hernandez PhD).

That line stayed with me, setting the tone for this moving and urgent narrative. And there were so many, another one that I had to write down was, “Our land protects us, nurtures us, and nourishes us. Our Land is what connects us to our ancestors and the natural world,” (Hernandez PhD).

This is more than a call to address climate change—it’s a call to heal our relationship with the land and to reconnect with our roots.
I read this as an ARC thanks to NetGalley, but can’t wait to add it to my shelves and I’ll definitely be rereading it several times.

Thank you to NetGalley and North Atlantic Books for the ARC of this incredible work.
(Hernandez PhD, J. Growing Papaya Trees. North Atlantic Books, 2025).