80 talking about this. In sum, a good month: Kluger, Jiles, Szab, Gornick, and Kimmerer all excellent. I liked that its structure is not chronological or geographical or even cyclical/seasonal. Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future. My Wounded Heart: The Life of Lilli Jahn, 1900 1944 (translated by John Brownjohn) uses those documents to powerful effect, showing how gamely her children fended for themselves and how movingly Jahn, arrested by an official with a grudge, contrary to Nazi law that excepted Jewish parents of non or half-Jewish children from deportation, hid her suffering from them. Omer Bartovs Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz is another fine example of the particular used to generate general conclusions. But she loves to hear from readers and friends, so please leave all personal correspondence here. She challenges the idea of (scientific) detachment: For what good is knowing, unless it is coupled with caring? (I will say, she likes rhetorical questions too much for my taste.). Of these 45 (34%) were by men, and 88 (66%) by women. For an example of mutual flourishing, Kimmerer considers mycorrhizae, fungal strands that inhabit tree roots. I swing between terror (about illness and death, about financial and economic collapse, about those lines around the block at the gun shop) and hope (maybe things could be different on the other side of this). (She is a member of the Potawatomi people and writes movingly about her efforts to learn Anishinaabe.) His earlier work, A Past in Hiding: Memory and Survival in Nazi Germany, which focuses on a part of the larger story told in the new book, is also excellent. That moment could be difficult or charged and might not be fun. Shes just a great character. An economy that grants personhood to corporations but denies it to the more-than-human beings: this is a Windigo economy., The trees act not as individuals, but somehow as a collective. I particularly love the moments, like her description of mast fruiting, when she teaches us about the natural world. Be the first to learn about new releases! Yet the problem is that the former seems the product of the latter instead of the other way around. Her first book, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, was awarded the John Burroughs Medal for outstanding nature writing, and her other work has appeared in Orion, Whole Terrain, and numerous scientific journals. And all of this in less than 250 pages. Only 4 were re-reads; no surprise, given how little I was teaching. I loved the short final chapter describing her shame and bewilderment, on taking up a favourite (unnamed) book, at the passages she had marked in earlier readings. Not for me, this time around (stalled out maybe 100 pages into each): The Corner That Held Them; Justine; The Raj Quartet; Antal Szerbs Journey by Moonlight. Johanna has forgotten English, has no memory of her parents, is devastated by the loss of her Kiowa family and its culture. 'It was a deeply personal thing that I wanted to put on the page'. Until next time I send you all strength, health, and courage in our new times. Please credit: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Uri Shulevitzs illustrated memoir, Chance: Escape from the Holocaust, is thoroughly engrossing, plus it shines a spotlight on the experience of Jewish refugees in Central Asia. The numbers we use to count plants in the sweetgrass meadow also recall the Creation Story. Ive enjoyed, these past months, having a long classic on the go, and will keep that up until the end of my sabbatical. I am reader more than anything else, and I expect to be for as long as thats humanly possible. I read Robin Wall Kimmerers Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants last month for a faculty, student, and staff reading group organized by one of my colleagues in the Biology department. Lurie has his moments, too, especially near the end, but I was always a little disappointed when we left Nora for him. For all of us, Kimmerer writes, becoming indigenous to a place means living as if your childrens future mattered, to take care of the land as if our lives, both material and spiritual, depended on it. Or, similarly, The more something is shared, the greater its value becomes. This statement is true both biologically and culturally. For me, this is a generous, even awe-inspiring definition. When was that? But also all those who insist on minimizing or relativizing her experiences. Do we jump right into the old business as usual or will we have learned something?. But sometimes, usually on my run, Ill wonder if Im mistaken in my assessment of the year. In Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (2013), Kimmerer employs the metaphor of braiding wiingaashk, a sacred plant in Native cultures, to express the intertwined relationship between three types of knowledge: TEK, the Western scientific tradition, and the lessons plants have to offer if we pay close attention to them. I didnt read much translated stuff: only 30 (23%) were not originally written in English. But Kassabova seems more comfortable when the spotlight is on others, and the people she encounters are fascinatingespecially as there is always the possibility that they might be harmful, or themselves have been so harmed that they cannot help but exert that pain on others. She is the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, which has earned Kimmerer wide acclaim. Lurie tells his story to Burke, and it takes a long time before we figure out that Burke is his camel. From tree-filled fiction to true stories of resilience and optimistic calls to action, these reads are a gentle antidote to eco-anxiety. Their life is in their movement, the inhale and the exhale of our shared breath. Klugers persecutors are legion: the Nazis, of course, and all the silent Germans who acquiesced to them. It is a prism through which to see the world. Her characters are arty types or professionals who learn things they dont always like about what they desire, especially since those desires they are so convinced by often turn out later to have been wrongheaded (like Prousts Swann, they spend their lives running after women who are not their types, except women here includes men, friends, careers, family life, their very sense of self). The concept of the honorable harvest, or taking only what one needs and using only what one takes, is another Indigenous practice informed by reciprocity. Instead, she focuses on the role of the librarians who make their way by wagon-train through the western desert, officially bringing state-sanctioned propaganda to fortified settlements but unofficially acting as couriers for a fledgling resistance. Reading Braiding Sweetgrass was almost painfully poignant; I couldnt reconcile what I experienced as the rightness of Kimmerers claims with the lived experience of late capitalism. And, of course, some reading. The center has become a vital site of interaction among Indigenous and Western scientists and scholars. Not as gloriously defiant as The Door, but worth your time. Gina is the willful teenage daughter of a general in the Hungarian Army during WWII. I saw spring onions on my walk last week, and little hints of the trillium and the violets, all of those who are waking up.. The way states use the precariousness of statelessness (the fate of many of the books characters) remains painfully timely. Lonesome Dove is good for people who love Westerns. We are in the midst of a great remembering, she says. It is a hallmark of the language of Sweetgrass. Dr. Kimmerer serves as a Senior Fellow for the Center for Nature and Humans. When a language dies, so much more than words are lost. Imagine the access we would have to different perspectives, the things we might see through other eyes, the wisdom that surrounds us. Sometimes Kimmerer opens indigenous ways of being to everybody; more often, though, she limits them to Native people. But she is equally adamant that students have things to give to the institutions where they spend so much of their lives. These are the books that leap to mind, the ones I dont need to consult my list to remember, the ones that, for whatever reason, I needed at this time in my life, the ones that left me with a bittersweet feeling of regret and joy when I ran my hands consolingly over the cover, as I find I do when much moved. It is a way of seeing which feels more essential than ever in our current planetary crisis. For good or for ill my response to bad times is the same as to goodto escape this world and its demands into a book. In her novel Other Peoples Houses, closely based on her own experience as a child brought from Vienna to England on the Kindertransport, Lore Segal takes no prisoners. Kimmerer explains how reciprocity is reflected in Native languages, which impart animacy to natural entities such as bodies of water and forests, thus reinforcing respect for nature. I have secure employment, about as secure as can be found these days, and whats more I spent half the year on sabbatical, and even before then I was working from home from mid-March and didnt miss my commute for a minute. That realization is marked in her changed understanding of the books titular character, which is, in fact, not a person but a statue on the school grounds with whom the girls leave notes asking for help or advice. Are. Robin Wall Kimmerer is the author of "Gathering Moss" and the new book " Braiding Sweetgrass". Best Parul Seghal recommendation: Seghal elicits some of the feelings in middle-aged me that Sontag did to my 20-year-old self, with the difference that I now have the wherewithal to read Seghals recommendations in a way I did not with Sontags. She grew up playing in the surrounding countryside. I feel bad saying it, it is a mark of my privilege and comfort, but 2020 was not the most terrible year of my life. Robin Wall Kimmerer is an American Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental and Forest Biology; and Director, Center for Native Peoples and the Environment, at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF).. Kimmerer is a co-founder of the Traditional Ecological Knowledge section of the Ecological Society of America and is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Maybe not earth-shattering, but deeply satisfying: Lissa Evanss V for Victory, Clare Chamberss Small Pleasures, two novels that deserve more readers, especially in the US, where, as far as I know, neither has yet been published. Riveting. The hockey playoffs drawing ever nearer. This semester Im part of a faculty learning cohort meeting regularly to enhance courses in our teaching repertoire to better support and promote well-being in our students and in ourselves. One of the first assignments was to write a short statement on what gives us joy in our teaching. Antigonas shameher escape from the code of conduct that governed her life in the remote mountains of Kosovo, and the suffering that escape brought onto her female relativesis different from Clanchysher realization that her own flourishing as a woman requires the backbreaking labour of anotherand it wouldnt be right to say that they have more in common than not. I can imagine the future day when young literary hipsters rediscover Hadleys books and wonder why she wasnt one of the most famous writers of her time. As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us.', and 'The land knows you, even when . In this way we might live in gratitude for the world, and the opportunity we have to contribute to its flourishing. Have I ever mentioned that Leichter was once my student? Jul. This time outdoors, playing, living, and observing nature rooted a deep appreciation for the natural environment in Kimmerer. She brings to her scientific research and writing her lived experience as a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and the principles of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). Registered office: 20 Vauxhall Bridge Rd, London,SW1V 2SA, UK. To speak of Rock or Pine or Maple as we might of Rachel, Leah, and Sarah. To consider the significance of nonhuman people. The joy of teaching thus inheres in the way that filling that role paradoxically allows me to perform myself. As we work to heal the earth, the earth heals us., The land knows you, even when you are lost., Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. The book concludes with a meditation on the windigo, the man-eating monstrous spirit from Algonquin mythology. We see that now, clearly. Sometimes I wish I could photosynthesize so that just by being, just by shimmering at the meadow's edge or floating lazily on a pond, I could be doing the work of the world while standing silent in the sun., To love a place is not enough. But it is always a space of joy. If you read novels for character, plot, and atmosphereif you are, in other words, as unsophisticated a reader as methen Lonesome Dove will captivate you, maybe even take you back to the days when you loved Saturdays because you could get up early and read and read before anyone asked you to do anything. She is the author of numerous scientific articles, and the book Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. The first half of the book is classic boarding school storyGina is a haughty outsider, she alienates the other girls, she struggles to become part of their cliquesbut, after a failed escape attempt, as the political situation in Hungary changes drastically (the Germans take over their client state in early 1944; Adolf Eichmann is sent to Budapest to oversee the deportation of what was at that point the largest intact Jewish community in Europe), Gina learns how much more is at stake than her personal happiness. I feel hopelessness at the ongoingness of the pandemic, the sense that we may still be closer to the beginning than the end. The sun and the moon are acknowledged, for instance. The two womens lives became as intertwined as their different backgrounds, classes, and values allowed them. Its hard to figure out why it takes the form that it does. We talk about the global pandemic crisis, the grief of families, the destruction and vulnerability. We could say that the book moves loosely from theory to action (towards the end, there are a couple of chapters offering what might be called specific case studieshow people have responded to particular ecosystems). Ostensibly revisionist western that disappoints in its hackneyed indigenous characters. Kate Clanchy, Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me & Antigona and Me. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. Robin Wall Kimmerer (born 1953) is an American Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental and Forest Biology; and Director, Center for Native Peoples and the Environment, at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF). She hoped it would be a kind of medicine for our relationship with the living world., Shes at home in rural upstate New York, a couple of weeks into isolation, when we speak. Like a lot of literary fiction today Obrechts novel goes all in on voice. With a very busy schedule, Robin isnt always able to reply to every personal note she receives. Theyve been on the earth far longer than we have been, and have had time to figure things out., Our indigenous herbalists say to pay attention when plants come to you; theyre bringing you something you need to learn., To be native to a place we must learn to speak its language., Paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world, receiving the gifts with open eyes and open heart.. Eventually it becomes clear that Abigailthe person who answers those notesis a member of the resistance, and in real danger. Im unconvinced this is an insuperable difference, but its not one Kimmerer resolves, or, as best I can tell, even sees. No matter what, though, Ill keep talking about it with you. The very earth that sustains us is being destroyed to fuel injustice. Magazine. This makes sense to me. Antigona is Clanchys pseudonym for a Kosovan refugee who became her housekeeper and nanny in the early 2000s. And, most painfully, the people closest to her: her first husband; an old friend (the well-known German writer Martin Walser); a great-aunt who, in prewar Vienna, took away Klugers streetcar ticket collection from her, deeming it dirty and vulgar; the distant familial connections in America who wanted little to do with her when she and her mother landed there in the late 1940s. Promise to try these again another time. Because the relationship between self and the world is reciprocal, it is not a question of first getting enlightened or saved and then acting. Kimmerer, who is from New York, has become a cult figure for nature-heads since the release of her first book Gathering Moss (published by Oregon State University Press in 2003, when she was 50, well into her career as a botanist and professor at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York). All flourishing is mutual: what else are we learning now, unless it is the oppositewhen we fail to be mutual we cannot flourish. The world is not inexhaustible; it is finite. We need essayistic thinkingwith its associative leaps and rhizomatic structuremore than ever. Plant Ecologist, Educator, and Writer Robin Wall Kimmerer articulates a vision of environmental stewardship informed by traditional ecological knowledge and . Most excitingly, I had a lot of time to read. Longest book (runner up): Dickenss Our Mutual Friend A mere 900-pager. I do have quibbles with Braiding Sweetgrass: its too long, too diffuse. Kimmerer hopes we will be different-better on the other side of this. (She compares these to rights in a property economy.). Oh yeah, when we were stressed and run into the ground by daily cares. The Captain becomes ever fonder of the child (not in a creepy way, its totally above board in that regard), but the feeling hurts him. Teaching is a way for me to be seenwhich for reasons of temperament and family origin has always been a struggle. A road novel about a cattle-drive from the Mexican border to Montana around 1870. An expert bryologist and inspiration for Elizabeth Gilbert's. Im a Potawatomi scientist and a storyteller, working to create a respectful symbiosis between Indigenous and western ecological knowledges for care of lands and cultures. Lives Reclaimed: A Story of Rescue and Resistance in Nazi Germany, All Flourishing is Mutual: Robin Wall Kimmerers Braiding Sweetgrass. But what we see is the power of unity. To find out what personal data we collect and how we use it, please visit our Privacy Policy, For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more, Lee Child Jack Reacher Series | 6 for 30, Industry commitment to professional behaviour. When Im really teaching Im sometimes expoundingbeing the expert makes me anxious but also fills me with a geeky thrillbut mostly Im leading by example. /2017/02/FMN-Logo-300x222-1-300x222.png Janet Quinn 2021-03-21 21:40:09 2021-03-21 21:40:10 Review of Gathering Moss, by Robin Wall Kimmerer. It transcends ethnicity or history and allows all of us to think of ourselves as indigenous, as long as we value the long-term well-being of the collective. Anyway, Ill follow her pretty much anywhere, which sometimes leads me to writers I would otherwise have passed on. Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (2013) A book about reciprocity and solidarity; a book for every time, but especially this time. A brilliant historical novel. Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library. Garner brilliantly presents Helens rage at the obviously bogus nature of the therapyand Nicolas blithe (which is to say, deeply terrified) unwillingness to acknowledge that reality. This book is about these places, but as the singular noun in the title suggests, lake here primarily concerns a mindset, one organized around the way place draws together different peoples. By Robin Wall Kimmerer. (Last week I had to be somewhere relatively crowded, for the first time in months, and boy am I going to be in for a rude awakening when this is all over.) That was in the middle of a wave of protests across Canada regarding indigenous rights (more specifically, their absence), prompted by an RCMP raid against the hereditary chiefs of the Wetsuweten Nation, who along with their allies are seeking to prevent a pipeline from being built across their unceded territory. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. Now that I am an American I should know the literature better! Presenter. Together, we are exploring the ways that the collective, intergenerational brilliance of Indigenous science and wisdom can help us reimagine our relationship with the natural world. Written in 2013, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants is a nonfiction book by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation.The work examines modern botany and environmentalism through the lens of the traditions and cultures of the Indigenous peoples of North America. Helen is resentful, too, about the demanding and disgusting job of taking care of Nicola (seldom have sheets been stripped, washed, and remade as often as in this novel). She shares the many ways Indigenous peoples enact reciprocity, that is, foster a mutually beneficial relationship with their surroundings. TEK refers to the body of knowledge Indigenous peoples cultivate through their relationship with the natural world. Kimmerer, a professor of environmental biology and the director of the Centre for Native Peoples and the Environment at the State University of New York in Syracuse, is probably the most. But to our people, it was everything: identity, the connection to our ancestors, the home of our nonhuman kinfolk, our pharmacy, our library, the source of all that sustained us. Kimmerer suggests that the windigo rests potentially in all of us, less a monster than an aspect of human being. Its essays cover all sorts of topics: from reports of maple sugar seasoning (Kimmerer is from upstate New York) to instructions for how to clear a pond of algae to descriptions of her field studies to meditations on lichen. Id never read Jiles before, only vaguely been aware of her, but now Im making my way through the backlist. Dear ReadersAmerica, Colonists, Allies, and Ancestors-yet-to-be, We've seen that face before, the drape of frost-stiffened hair, the white-rimmed eyes peering out from behind the tanned hide of a humanlike mask, the flitting gaze that settles only when it finds something of true interestin a mirror . I was a big fan of this book back in the springand its rendering on audio book, beautifully rendered by a gravelly-voiced Grover Gardnerand I still think on it fondly. Biodiversity loss and the climate crisis make it clear that its not only the land that is broken, but our relationship to land. I just cant figure out how to get from here (our ravaged planet, our unbridled consumption) to there. Of all these documents, I was perhaps most moved by the life of Lilli Jahn, a promising doctor abandoned in the early war years by her non-Jewish husband, as told by her grandson Martin Doerry through copious use of family letters. This sense of connection arises from a special kind of discrimination, a search image that comes from a long time spent looking and listening. ); Henri Boscos Malicroix translated by Joyce Zonana (so glad this is finally in English; even if I was not head-over-heels with it, Ill never forget its descriptions of weather. Those. Moving deftly between scientific evidence and storytelling, Kimmerer reorients our understanding of the natural world. What does enlightenment have to do with the failure of the body, anyway? Board . These are the books a reader reads for. I like knowing things, and showing others that I know them, and helping them learn those thingsyet playing expert is also the part of teaching that stresses me out the most. Joanna Macy writes that until we can grieve for our planet we cannot love itgrieving is a sign of spiritual health. She is the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants and Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. Upright Women Wanted is a queer western that includes a non-binary character; its most lasting legacy might be its contribution to normalizing they/them/their pronouns. How to imagine a different relationship with the rest of nature, at a time of declining numbers of swifts, hedgehogs, ancient woodlands. She suggests we emphasize ways to develop ceremonies in our daily lives, for these create belonging. For more, read Jacquis review. I choose joy over despair. Mast fruiting trees spend years making sugar, hoarding it in the form of starch in their roots. Ill read more science fiction in 2021, I suspect; it feels vital in a way crime fiction hasnt much, lately. She holds a BS in Botany from SUNY ESF, an MS and PhD in Botany from the University of Wisconsin and is the author of numerous scientific papers on plant ecology, bryophyte ecology, traditional knowledge and restoration ecology.

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