Reviews

Sparrow Envy: Field Guide to Birds and Lesser Beasts by J. Drew Lanham

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alonelyreader04's review against another edition

5.0

To escape for a few hours in other breathing beings’ lives. To envy who they are. To revel for just an hour or two in their songs. But then, I hesitate, wondering what’s happened overnight? What city burns? Who’s alive? Who’s dead? Can a blue grosbeak change human plight? Can an eastern meadowlark’s territorial claim to sunrise, orange sky, or the right to breathe without death in the offing, become for a moment my own dream? Just thinking there might be some way to be where I am in my Black skin and not wonder if I’m being trailed, tailed, watched, surveilled, sized up to be brought down? Still thinking on it—whether I should go to some wide open field with clouds and grass; sit among grasshopper sparrows balanced on thin wires concerned with nothing else but being themselves. Lucky birds. Troubled man.