Awards:

Advance praise:

"Liza Grandia’s Kernels of Resistance tells the story of the power of Seed and Seed Freedom, of Seed Keepers and growers of diversity. Milpa as the metaphor of diversity and community is the ground of resistance against Monocultures and Monopolies of the Mind. A must read for those seeking Seed Freedom and Food Freedom."

Vandana Shiva, winner of the Right Livelihood Award and author of more than twenty

books about seed sovereignty and the violence of the Green Revolution

"Kernels of Resistance is an exemplary politically engaged anthropology of the powerful. With energy and clarity, Grandia weaves together Maya calendrics and agricultural knowledge, ethnography, political history, chemistry, scrappy legal and bureaucratic sleuthing, and odes to maize and weeds to create a handbook for anticorporate activists and activist scholars."

Nicholas Copeland, anthropologist in the Department of History, Virginia Tech

"In this deeply researched and passionately argued book, Liza Grandia offers the surprising trajectory of seed activism in Guatemala as inspiration for a food movement centered above all on global equity and environmental justice."

Helen Anne Curry, a Yale-trained historian of plant sciences and seed banking now

at the Georgia Institute of Technology by way of Cambridge University.

"This is a stunningly fine ethnographic study of Guatemalan Maya resistance to dangerous pesticides and to genetically engineered maize varieties. The study expands from the Maya farmers to the whole sleazy political world of giant corporations that saturate the world with carcinogenic poisons in the name of pest control . . . The heroism of the Maya in resisting government and corporate pressure will come as no surprise to anyone who knows the Maya, but will be amazing and inspiring to others. This is really a monumental study of resistance to corporate poisoning.In this deeply researched and passionately argued book, Liza Grandia offers the surprising trajectory of seed activism in Guatemala as inspiration for a food movement centered above all on global equity and environmental justice."

Eugene N. Anderson,  Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, University of California-Riverside

Web essay:

Julia Fine, "Maize: Sacred Plant, Global Community"

Reviews: 

H-Net Reviews by María de los Ángeles Picone (December 2025): https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=61728

  • Excerpt:  "[Grandia] peels off the legal, environmental, and biological layers of Guatemalan and Mexican farmers’ fight for food sovereignty, demonstrating that collective action is not only possible but also necessary. Ultimately, Grandia’s work reminds us that the struggle for autonomy over land and seeds is also a struggle over knowledge to construct a more sustainable future."

Ecolit Books by John Yuker (March 1, 2025): https://ecolitbooks.com/2025/03/01/book-review-kernels-of-resistance-by-liza-grandia/

  • "Ultimately, this is hopeful book. True, the battles are far from over yet farmers around the world who were sold on the many merits of GM seeds are realizing that they have been lied to. That they are killing their soil with chemicals. That the seeds don’t work as well as they once did. And that insects are becoming immune to all those pesticides. In other words, farmers are learning to listen to their ancestors and, perhaps, to themselves. / There is much talking of “resistance” as of late. Read this book to learn how to resist the corporations who would rather you not know what you are eating. And read this book to appreciate the miracle that is maize and its many heroic defenders."

Book review links will be posted as they are published. Book review editors can request a print or digital copy by writing to Molly Woolbright at UW Press, mwoolbri@uw.edu."