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Reviews tagging 'Cannibalism'
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer
15 reviews
bashsbooks's review against another edition
4.25
All-in-all, Braiding Sweetgrass is a fantastic personal essay collection about nature, culture, and our interpersonal (person here including nonhumans!) connections. I can understand perfectly why it is so popular and widely recommended. My friend and I listened the audiobook, so we not only appreciated the descriptions as written, but also, Kimmerer's steady and soothing voice as she read through the text she so lovingly crafted. My favorite takeaways from Braiding Sweetgrass were: the obvious and unabashed love Kimmerer has for the natural world, her willingness to combine traditional wisdom and hard science, her gentle encouragement to consider the world from a different perspective (especially that of a plant or an animal), and her fierce love and appreciate for her Potawatomi culture and heritage. I was also deeply compelled by her rumination on how to become indigenous to place and what obligations we have to others (both human and not). What I liked less was relatively minor by comparison; I thought she was a little uncomfortably committed to gender roles as 'natural' from time to time, and I wished that she came out and actually expanded on her issues with 'technology' rather than taking vague pot-shots at it here and there. Adjacently, my friend pointed out that the anecdote about an ex's attempted suicide in his car to make a point about human disconnectedness with nature was... messy, at best. But those were small moments, and with a book as long and expansive as this one, there were bound to be hangups here and there. Overall, fantastic book, and I highly recommend listening to the audiobook.
Graphic: Grief and Colonisation
Moderate: Animal death, Racism, Misogyny, Sexism, Violence, Genocide, and Religious bigotry
Minor: Cannibalism, Cultural appropriation, Fire/Fire injury, and Suicide attempt
Graphic descriptions of environmental disasters, pollution, and other eco-destructive activities.wickedgrumpy's review against another edition
3.25
Minor: Cannibalism, Genocide, Racism, Abandonment, Death, Pregnancy, Animal death, Chronic illness, Colonisation, Cancer, Animal cruelty, Classism, Misogyny, Xenophobia, and Religious bigotry
the_reading_wren's review against another edition
5.0
I highly recommend the audiobook because it is read wonderfully by the author.
Graphic: War, Death, Forced institutionalization, Grief, Religious bigotry, Fire/Fire injury, Animal death, Colonisation, Cultural appropriation, Racism, and Kidnapping
Minor: Alcohol, Alcoholism, Vomit, Pregnancy, Suicide attempt, Cannibalism, Addiction, Slavery, Stalking, Cancer, Misogyny, Religious bigotry, and Sexual content
maeverose's review against another edition
4.0
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.”
Graphic: Animal death
Moderate: Colonisation, Excrement, Racism, Animal cruelty, Kidnapping, Suicide attempt, Vomit, and Gore
Minor: Cannibalism and Ableism
Graphic: destruction of ecosystems and nature, climate change Moderate: baby/motherhood talk, animal goremadzie's review against another edition
4.5
Graphic: Racism, Xenophobia, Animal death, Vomit, and Colonisation
Moderate: Cultural appropriation, Genocide, and Death
Minor: Cannibalism
This book goes into graphic depth about climate change and the death of nature and our planet.karcitis's review against another edition
3.0
Moderate: Animal death, Colonisation, Genocide, Fire/Fire injury, and Xenophobia
Minor: Vomit and Cannibalism
talonsontypewriters's review against another edition
5.0
Graphic: Colonisation and Racism
Moderate: Xenophobia, Death, War, Grief, Religious bigotry, Animal death, Genocide, Fire/Fire injury, Classism, and Forced institutionalization
Minor: Sexism, Suicide, Vomit, Alcohol, Car accident, Cannibalism, Excrement, Abandonment, Child death, Animal cruelty, Pregnancy, Cultural appropriation, Misogyny, Suicide attempt, and Murder
Climate change, habitat destruction, pollution.nodogsonthemoon's review against another edition
5.0
Moderate: Racism, Colonisation, Animal death, Grief, Death, Fire/Fire injury, and Genocide
Minor: Child death, Cannibalism, Car accident, Hate crime, Suicide, and War
aguattery's review against another edition
4.0
Graphic: Animal death, Colonisation, and Genocide
Moderate: Forced institutionalization and Racism
Minor: Cannibalism
readandfindout's review against another edition
4.25
Themes: 4 stars
Perspective: 5 stars
Graphic: Colonisation
Moderate: Racism, Grief, Genocide, Death, Forced institutionalization, Cannibalism, Animal death, Kidnapping, and Religious bigotry