Reviews with content warning for Animal cruelty - Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

Reviews tagging 'Animal cruelty'

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

13 reviews

readingwithkaitlyn's review against another edition

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informative reflective slow-paced

4.0

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wickedgrumpy's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful informative lighthearted reflective relaxing slow-paced

3.25

The way the author talks about their connection to nature is truly evocative and beautiful. There’s a familial component to it that, at first, was comforting in that you can find a community all around you if you would but care to look. But then it began to center motherhood and the assumption that if female, you too will be a mother and experience these things, which was unfortunate. It became a repetitive narrative that dragged itself to the finish line.

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maeverose's review against another edition

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4.0

This is a collection of essays about Indigenous peoples’ relationship to plants and what we can learn from it to have a better relationship to the earth, and help heal the damage that’s been done to it. As well as some cool plant science sprinkled throughout.

I think this book should be required reading for every non-Indigenous American. I’ve always loved nature, but this book really helped me appreciate elements of nature that I took for granted or never really thought about. Who knew cattails were so cool? This book shows how amazing and intelligent plants are. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s writing is very vivid and beautiful, and the plant science is written in an easy to understand way.

I did have two small issues with it:

Some of the language she uses when talking about women made me a bit uncomfortable. She talks a lot about motherhood in relation to womanhood, which is always a bit of a terfy red flag for me. Not to mention it’s also just regressive even when talking strictly about women. This isn’t about the parts where she writes about her own experience as a mother, of course, she’s more than allowed to do that in her own memoir lol. I understand that this could also be a matter of cultural difference, as I’m a white, so I’ll leave it at that.

Because this is a collection of essays, a lot of them are a bit repetitive. I ended up putting myself into a reading slump by reading too much of this in a short span of time, as I’m really sensitive to repetition and it started to feel tedious to read. I really should’ve read an essay a week and just gone through the book really slowly. That likely would’ve worked better for me.

Those things aside, I still think this book is really good and would strongly recommend it.

My favorite essays:
•The Counsel of Pecans
•An Offering
•Learning the Grammar of Animacy
•Maple Sugar Moon
•Witch Hazel
•Mishkos Kenomagwen: The Teachings of Grass
•Sitting in a Circle
•Defeating Windigo

Some of my favorite quotes:

“Listening in wild places, we are audience to conversations in a language not our own.”

“When we tell them that a tree is not a who, but an it, we make that maple an object; we put a barrier between us, absolving ourselves of moral responsibility and opening the door to exploitation. Saying it makes a living land into “natural resources.” If a maple is an it, we can take up a chainsaw. If a maple is a her, we think twice.”

“In a consumer society, contentment is a radical proposition. Recognizing abundance rather than scarcity undermines an economy that thrives by creating unmet desires.”

“What would it be like, I wondered, to live with that heightened sensitivity to the lives given for ours? To consider the tree in the kleenex, the algae in the toothpaste, the oaks in the floor, the grapes in the wine; to follow back the thread of life in everything and pay it respect?”

“Experiments are not about discovery but about listening and translating the knowledge of other beings.”

“It is an odd dichotomy we have set for ourselves, between loving people and loving land. We know that loving a person has agency and power—we know it can change everything. Yet we act as if loving the land is an internal affair that has no energy outside the confines of our head and heart.”

“If grief can be a doorway to love, then let us all weep for the world we are breaking apart so we can love it back to wholeness again.”

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parasolcrafter's review against another edition

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emotional informative inspiring slow-paced

5.0

this really is one of those books someone like me cant really add anything to; all i can say is that its an INCREDIBLE book that i think almost everyone should read.

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