Reviews tagging 'Racism'

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

75 reviews

sunnymouse's review

5.0

challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring sad medium-paced

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Racism, Xenophobia, Colonisation

sadhbh2525's review against another edition

4.25

emotional informative reflective slow-paced

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Racism, Grief, Colonisation

Moderate: Death, Genocide, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Religious bigotry, Fire/Fire injury, Cultural appropriation, War

Minor: Cannibalism

krandelzhofer's review against another edition

3.0

informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

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The author’s voice was very soothing in the audiobook. I will need to listen again to get more of the text’s details. 

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Content Warnings

Minor: Genocide, Racism, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Religious bigotry, Colonisation, War

angelsplash's review against another edition

5.0

challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

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What a perfect book. Wall has such a way with words that you can't help getting lost in her imagery and hope. I believe this should be a must read for everyone. It doesn't matter who you are or where you live, this book has something to say and it's damn important too! The first part of the book is very whimsical and told from the author's personal stories and experiences surrounding nature. The second gets real though. Wall grabs your hand and forces you to grapple with your own selfish greed and how it all contributed to the destruction around us. This book will make you cry and transform your very soul. Read it and be changed!

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Forced institutionalization, Xenophobia, Colonisation

Minor: Animal death, Racism, Suicide, Excrement, Car accident

hedsek's review against another edition

3.0

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective slow-paced

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I have mixed feelings about this book. But let's start with the good! It is beautifully written and I do enjoy the way separate stories and anecdotes formed a whole. There are some good ideas in here as well: I especially thought the chapter on healing the relationship between people and land rather than healing just the land in order for it to be more sustainable was very insightful. I also enjoyed the first Windigo chapter and the story about the pond. I do think the book could have been quite a lot shorter and there were quite a few stories that had the same message, where one or two of them could have sufficed. I also didn't really enjoy the large focus on femininity and motherhood in the first chapters, but that's just my own preference. But what I really didn't like about this book is that is somehow seems to still be very individualistic in its approach to applying indigenous ways of thinking to our relation with science and nature. There were quite a few chapters where I felt like we as readers were invited to kind of laugh at the authors' students who couldn't go a day without their cellphones, wore high heels on excursions and couldn't look at a plant without going ewwww. But then when it turned to systemic issues, the book just didn't really seem to have a lot to say. It's not necessarily that I think a book like this should offer all the solutions to our problems, but the few solutions it did seem to offer are quite inaccessible for most people and I don't think the book really dealt with this. It didn't feel like the author was trying to blame individuals for their consumption too much, but the combination of these sort of caricatural depictions of random people who don't know enough about nature vs the way systemic issues were glossed over or treated more distantly/matter-of-factlike did leave a sort of sour taste for me. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Genocide, Forced institutionalization, Colonisation

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Death, Racism, Dementia, Cannibalism, Religious bigotry, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Classism

Minor: Misogyny, Sexism, Terminal illness, Blood, Excrement, Grief

terror_dactyl's review against another edition

5.0

emotional hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

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I have a feeling I’ll be coming back to this one again and again.
This should be required reading for everyone; a guide on how to live with reciprocity for the land and what we can do to care for it in this Fossil Fuel nation.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Racism, Colonisation

cassidysheppard's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective relaxing slow-paced

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Genocide, Colonisation

Moderate: Death, Racism

clarabooksit's review against another edition

4.5

hopeful inspiring reflective slow-paced

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Genocide, Racism, Grief, Colonisation, Classism

Moderate: Death

Minor: Violence, War

morgantw's review

5.0

hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

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This book is so beautifully written. A mix of the authors Indigenous wisdom and experience as a Botanist to provide a hopeful perspective on how we may turn around humanities negative impact on the planet. There are so many take aways from the book I will continue to look towards in how I view the world. A new favorite. I really loved it.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Racism, Colonisation

cursed10fold's review against another edition

5.0

emotional informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Genocide, Colonisation

Moderate: Death, Racism, Grief, Religious bigotry

Minor: Vomit, Cannibalism, War