rec: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

[jesse_the_k]

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

print, ebook, audio, Bookshare

This lovely book was recommended by several people to me at last year's WisCon. The author is an Indigenous scientist/professor who specializes in the biology of mosses, and her perspective on the importance of all living things blew my mind in the best possible way. A truly comforting read that also challenges my world-view.

Author reads an excerpt

'People can’t understand the world as a gift unless someone shows them how'

"I think that that’s the role of art: to help us into grief, and through grief, for each other, for our values, for the living world. You know, I think about grief as a measure of our love, that grief compels us to do something, to love more.” Compelling us to love nature more is central to her long-term project, and it’s also the subject of her next book, though “it’s definitely a work in progress”. “The way I’m framing it to myself is, when somebody closes that book, the rights of nature make perfect sense to them,” she says. “I’m really trying to convey plants as persons.”

Kimmerer says that the coronavirus has reminded us that we’re “biological beings, subject to the laws of nature. That alone can be a shaking,” she says, motioning with her fist. “But I wonder, can we at some point turn our attention away to say the vulnerability we are experiencing right now is the vulnerability that songbirds feel every single day of their lives? Could this extend our sense of ecological compassion, to the rest of our more-than-human relatives?”

​http://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/23/robin-wall-kimmerer-people-cant-understand-the-world-as-a-gift-unless-someone-shows-them-how

Comments

[muccamukk]

I love that book so much. It's one that I randomly buy and give to people a lot. Her previous book, Gathering Moss, was also good, but a lot more biology than culturally focused.

Hope she writes the new one soon.

[bibliofile]

That sounds fabulous. Thanks for the rec!

I'm only the 128th person in line to read it from the library system (which has 26 paper copies). I love that it's still so popular.

[luzula]

Oooh, mosses.

How does it challenge your worldview?

[jesse_the_k]

Kimmerer is both a scientist-who-studies-mosses and a living-being-sharing-the-planet-with-mosses. I'd assumed those approaches would cancel each other out.

[luzula]

Really? Many biologists I know combine the two. : )

[tarasacon]

It’s been high on my list of books to read!

[ifreet]

I picked up a copy recently! I'll roll it higher in my to-reads.

[jesse_the_k]

Let me know what you think -- at your pace.