This book pleased me on many fronts. First, it's an easy read and flows nicely. Second, I felt transported, that I was there in the rain forest with Joan Fry. Her honest, sometimes humorous, assessment of life in the jungle, adapting to ways of the Maya, was inspiring. To have been so young and flexible with the challenges: a particular pig part in her soup, a tarantula in her shoe to her love of being "Teacher" to the young Kekchi minds. Loved the book. Bravo.

Since I'm familiar with Belize I really enjoyed Joan's account of her experience. A great read for anyone!

Loved this book from beginning to end. Now following her on Amazon so I will know when her next book comes out...or a movie. I learned a lot from her journey, and there are not many books that would inspire me so much. Her writing style is so real, it's almost like reading a movie. More from you please, Joan Fry!

Joan Fry’s How To Cook A Tapir held my interest from the start with stories of her and her husband Aaron’s adventures in Belize, the village they lived in, the families they lived with and the children she taught along with delicious recipes of the Kekchi Mayans.

This is a very special book that allowed me to enter another culture intimately and without intrusion. What an adventure for a woman about to turn 21 years of age! The book brought me into the Kekchi Mayans’ everyday world by observing Joan and Aaron’s adjustments, dramas and learnings within that world.

Joan Fry uses humor so well and through their humor I got to know the people in the village in a charming way. Joan can laugh at herself as well, engaging and bringing the reader in. Her style, prose and storytelling are of the highest order and her talent shows through.

Joan’s experiences and the aspects of Kekchi Mayan culture that she introduced me to will stay with me for a long while. I am already trying the recipes in the book.

I highly recommend How To Cook A Tapir. It is a memoir that informs, entertains and leaves you with much admiration for its author.

How to Cook a Tapir by Joan Fry is a wonderful, warm and entertaining memoir. She tells about her adventures in Belize with her anthropologist husband Aaron with humor and grace. Not only do we learn about the Kekchi and Maya people, we also see the author come of age as a young, naïve newlywed in the 1960s. Joan tells her story with amazing openness and we take the journey with her learning and growing in understanding of a different culture and life. I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to read a true story that is compelling and witty.

Imagine spending your honeymoon on a pig boat and being unceremoniously introduced to your newlywed home, consisting of a dirt floor and some stones to cook on. Imagine finding out that your new latrine is in the 'bush' and that the only source of water involves climbing a hill with a bucket on your head. Imagine lying awake in you hammock all night waiting for the next tarantula to drop on your face. Imagine being alone in a village, where no one speaks your language, everyone knows your business and where the other women make it obvious that they think you are useless excuse for a wife.

You have to give Joan Fry, the author of 'How to Cook a Tapir - A memoir of Belize' a lot of credit for maintaining her sense of humour when most sensible women would have packed up and gone home. In 1962, her anthropologist husband dragged her off to the rain forest of Belize to live with the Kekchi Maya, so that he could further his studies. Only 20 years old and from a comfortable American life, Ms. Fry, does what only a woman with a strong constitution in those circumstances could, she cooks.

Truthfully, she attempts to cook - badly at first. As she yearns to gain acceptance in her new community of curious neighbours, she discovers the real meaning of culture shock. But we all have to eat and that was the bridge that Ms. Fry built and crossed to not only discover the magic and wonder of the Maya people but also to discover that her new husband was truly an [...].

How to Cook a Tapir takes readers through an evocative journey, experiencing the wonders of life in the rainforest through the naive but highly intelligent eyes of a girl becoming a woman in completely alien circumstances. Every chapter ends with a recipe that represents the knowledge and wisdom she gains from her entertaining, frustrating and sometimes frightening experiences.

Anyone who is interested in the Maya people, their culture, their food or their way of life, will find this uniquely insightful book a real eye opener. Anyone who is interested in food, will find some of the authentic Maya recipes a gastronomic adventure and absolutely anyone who has found themselves in love with someone who rapidly disappoints them will empathise, sympathise and ocassionally guffaw at the author's sometimes clumsy attempts at being a good wife.

I highly recommend this book and can't wait for the movie.

This book sat on my to-be-read shelf for two years, but once I began reading I devoured it in two days. Having lived overseas three times - though never in such primitive or challenging conditions - I understood the author's initial culture shock, her growing fondness for her students, and her ultimate reluctance to leave. She was very young, very unprepared, but with courage and intelligence she plunged ahead. Full of great detail that takes you right into the empty hut she had to turn into a home. She takes you along as her neighbors become friends and she becomes aware of her own competence.

I love to read and this book went right to the top of my love to read, and read again, list. The book is a story of Belize and the author’s journey through time and space. Her experiences are a journal of progression and development that we as humans on this planet can aspire to and can hopefully achieve. Although the back cover says the book is a cookbook, that is like saying the Odyssey is a travelogue.

As an aside, the Tapir is the national animal of Belize, so next edition I fully expect to see "Banned in Belize" featured prominently on the cover.

Fabulous - funny - poignant look at the Maya of SW Belize in the 1960s from the viewpoint of a newly wed teacher married to a anthropologist - her revelations about her less-than-perfect marriage and the K'ekchi & Mopan Maya are a snapshot of the times in America