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

i think this is the best book i’ve ever read, if not the best book ever written. a beautiful mix of memoir and history and knowledge. kimmerer takes you through the tragic massacres of the indigenous peoples, and the ways in which they have persevered and kept their culture and traditions alive. she talks about her own childhood and her relationship with the earth. this book taught me so much and also just reminded me how much i don’t know and still have to learn. i highly recommend listening to the audiobook as well, kimmerer narrates it herself and the pure passion in her words along with the poetry of her writing is so powerful. i can’t wait to read this over and over again

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grace_b_3's review against another edition

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informative inspiring slow-paced

3.0

I really appreciated the message of this book, about humans being a part of the environment, and how we, as humans, should live in and with nature. However, the writing style wasn't for me, as I prefer drier, denser nonfiction. If you like to read poetry and memoirs, you'll probably really enjoy this, as the writing style might be more in line with your tastes.

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theabee's review against another edition

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informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

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bashsbooks's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective relaxing medium-paced

4.25

I buddy-read Braiding Sweetgrass with my dear and beloved friend @emakay... which means I've already commented on it extensively in a private setting. So I will do my best to summarize my thoughts, but apologies if this review reads a little more scattershot than some of my others.

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.

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jennswan's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective relaxing sad slow-paced

5.0

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catinaflatcap's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful informative reflective slow-paced

5.0

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