{"id":17510,"date":"2025-10-23T19:54:28","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T19:54:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/?p=17510"},"modified":"2025-10-23T19:54:53","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T19:54:53","slug":"fearless-sleepless-deathless-what-fungi-taught-me-about-nourishment-poison-ecology-hidden-histories-zombies-and-black-survival-by-maria-pinto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/23\/fearless-sleepless-deathless-what-fungi-taught-me-about-nourishment-poison-ecology-hidden-histories-zombies-and-black-survival-by-maria-pinto\/","title":{"rendered":"Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless: What Fungi Taught Me about Nourishment, Poison, Ecology, Hidden Histories, Zombies, and Black Survival by Maria Pinto"},"content":{"rendered":"

c.2025, The University of North Carolina Press\u00a0 <\/em>
\n$23.00\u00a0 \u00a0<\/em>
\n240 pages<\/em><\/p>\n

By Terri Schlichenmeyer<\/em>
\nThe Truth Contributor<\/em><\/p>\n

Something weird is growing on your kitchen sink.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t there last night but today? Yeah, and it\u2019s not intentional. You need to get rid of it somehow, wipe it off, kill it, eliminate it altogether or, as in the new book Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless<\/em> by Maria Pinto,<\/strong> maybe study it and eat it.<\/p>\n

Junjo or duppy umbrella.<\/p>\n

When Maria Pinto was studying a mushroom species she found in a Target parking lot, her mother scoffed. In Jamaica, she said, there were just two kinds of mushrooms, which sent Pinto off on a search. The word \u201cjunjo\u201d sounded like something else, which led to another thought, which took her further down the mushroom hole.<\/p>\n

As a \u201cmelancholic\u201d kid, \u201cweird, queer\u2026 a child destined to stay strange,\u201d Pinto\u2019d always been fascinated with dirt and the things growing in it. For a while, she liked to taste dirt, to know its saltiness. Eventually, she realized that, in eating soil, she was also eating a considerable amount of fungus.<\/p>\n

Self-taught, her laboratory extended out her front door, surrounding her house, and out on nearby trails. She began spending time in wooded areas, face to the ground, photographing and getting to know the fungi that she found.<\/p>\n

Fungi does not have a \u201cseason,\u201d although mushroom-hunting does, and Pinto enjoys the taste of what she finds, experimenting with ways to make each fungus palatable. The smell of one kind of mushroom can vary from the next; sometimes, mushrooms smell like something you\u2019d never want to eat, but in an oddly mouthwatering way.<\/p>\n

Fungus, especially in mushroom form, are tainted by race, says Pinto. They were often used as a meat substitute when slaves were underfed – and when they were inedible or even poisonous, they were quite possibly instruments of revenge on overseers or slave masters.<\/p>\n

All mushrooms, Pinto points out, are edible. Some just once.<\/p>\n

Dirt. You scrub it off your shoes, tumble it from your clothes, wipe it off your hands and watch it swirl down the drain. And after you\u2019ve read Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless<\/em>, you\u2019ll want to look at what\u2019s in it a little closer.<\/p>\n

A mycophile is a person who\u2019s interested in mushrooms and fungi, and author Maria Pinto may create a few more of them with her guileless obsession with all things mushroom. She\u2019s unabashed in sharing her biography in this book, which fits with the lessons learned, and she adds history where appropriate but the body of this book teaches readers to want to open their eyes wide to the tiniest things that surround us. Pinto encourages readers to get low, to get dirty, to smell and touch and know nature\u2019s hidden things that many of us might normally rear away from. That\u2019s a practice that\u2019s easy, cheap, and fun.<\/p>\n

If you love to eat mushrooms, you enjoy a lighthearted science book, you need a new hobby, or you\u2019ve noticed fungi and wondered about it, this book gives you permission to find out. Truly, Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless<\/em> is a book to sink your teeth into.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

c.2025, The University of North Carolina Press\u00a0 $23.00\u00a0 \u00a0 240 pages By Terri Schlichenmeyer The Truth Contributor Something weird is growing on your kitchen sink. It wasn\u2019t there last night but today? Yeah, and it\u2019s not intentional. You need to get rid of it somehow, wipe it off, kill it, eliminate it altogether or, as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17511,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"wf_post_folders":[20],"class_list":["post-17510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book_review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17510"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17512,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17510\/revisions\/17512"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17510"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=17510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}