As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these lenses of knowledge together to show that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings are we capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learning to give our own gifts in return.
An obvious 5*, Kimmerer is an incredible author with a strong base of knowledge that spans across many fields. Her authorial voice is more like a guide, bringing you through her life and relationship with the world around her all while imparting important knowledge, advice, Native lore and experience, and political lessons. I do feel in parts it could have benefitted from longer chapters, but overall I found this to be a really brilliant read.
The most soulful book I've read in my life. The beauty of Kimmerer's words, braiding native, scientific, and modern life is an experience I want to keep going back to.
Robin Wall Kimmerer is undoubtedly one of the best writers and storytellers on the topic of human life in the nonhuman (natural) world. Braiding Sweetgrass takes all of her best ability as a writer and converts it into an epic object that blends her scientific self as a botanist, her pedagogical self as an educator, and her storytelling self as a Potowatomi native American. None of these selves is a whole, and this entanglement of identity is central to how Wall Kimmerer explores environmental damage, the postcolonial American landscape, healing and our relationship with the natural world.
Central to the book is the argument that we cannot repair environmental damage without m,bracing care and love of the natural world. Particular criticism is levelled at the scientific institutes and western colonial practices, and their dismissal of love as part of life. The chapters blend native American myth/story with contemporary environmental and …
Robin Wall Kimmerer is undoubtedly one of the best writers and storytellers on the topic of human life in the nonhuman (natural) world. Braiding Sweetgrass takes all of her best ability as a writer and converts it into an epic object that blends her scientific self as a botanist, her pedagogical self as an educator, and her storytelling self as a Potowatomi native American. None of these selves is a whole, and this entanglement of identity is central to how Wall Kimmerer explores environmental damage, the postcolonial American landscape, healing and our relationship with the natural world.
Central to the book is the argument that we cannot repair environmental damage without m,bracing care and love of the natural world. Particular criticism is levelled at the scientific institutes and western colonial practices, and their dismissal of love as part of life. The chapters blend native American myth/story with contemporary environmental and social theory and events. Each is an individual essay; as a result, some seem disconnected and could have been left out to make the book more coherent overall. But that is an issue with editing, not with the writing. Regardless of what Robin Wall Kimmerer is writing on, the standard and entertainment of her storytelling is consistent.
EV1 says: I literally cried at every new chapter. This is one of the best books I have ever read on Nature and a great inspiration for my own pagan journey
