Review: "Our Knives Will Save Us" by Nephi Craig

Our Knives Will Save Us by Nephi Craig
Published July 2026 via Penguin Press
★★★★

Growing up, Craig had dreams of being a professional skateboarder—it was something of an accident (literal and figurative, I guess) that landed him in culinary school instead. It was culinary school that would get him out of the hole he'd found himself in...but it was a new look at traditional, Indigenous cooking that would ultimately pull him out of the holes that followed.

I didn't learn any of this in culinary school. During my formal education as a chef, the subject of Native foods never came up. The message I received from teachers and mentors, again and again, was loud and clear: When it came to cooking, all things French reigned supreme. (loc. 149*)

I'm perennially curious about stories and backgrounds that are not my own, and I have a growing list of books by Indigenous writers that I'm gradually working through (mostly while visiting my mother, whose library is much better for this than mine). Conveniently, Our Knives Will Save Us overlaps with another reading interest of mine, food memoir—the hook was baited, and this reader was caught.

This makes for a complicated story about family, heritage, addiction, loss, and coming home again. I love how much discussion of traditional foods Craig includes, as well as how clearly he calls out the ways in which Native cooking has been erased from history (or rather, appropriated by other cultures). I'm a rather disinterested cook (to the eternal dismay of my spouse), but I would cheerfully pore over a full book of recipes from Craig, ideally with even more history and context. (Would I make these recipes? Uh...I'd give the book to my mother, who is a much more interested cook than I, and then I'd hope she chose to make something with neither meat nor tomatoes.) I also love how straightforward he is in telling his story; when he makes excuses, it's in the context of coming back around and realizing that the excuses are just that, and gradually moving forward to make the changes he needs to make. A good one for those interested in memoir, Indigenous voices, food, recovery stories, and history.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.