A review by root
World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

2.0

Simultaneously not enough of a memoir and not enough of a nonfiction book about fauna and flora. Incoherently organized and bounces nonlinearly throughout the author's life without any cohesion or explanation. This is in part explained by the fact that at the end you find out these are a series of unrelated articles written by the author, but at the least they could have been organized in some way such as by time period or even by publication date. The formula is essentially discussing some small window of the author's life and staying "this is just like [insert animal]" with a list of incredibly basic facts about the plant or animal akin to skimming an encyclopedia entry. I did not feel as if I received enough information about the author as a memoir, as well, with sometimes only a couple sentences before it moves on to nature for another couple sentences. It results in the book feeling disjointed in both the memoir end and the nature nonfiction end. This needed to lean more toward one or the other, as the author could not juggle both. It is a small mercy that this was such a quick read.

As an aside it is getting really boring for me to see diaspora write about situations like being told their food is weird by a classmate and how that was just SO deeply awful for them that they ran home and screamed at their immigrant parents to never make it again because they hate it so so bad and then they decided to never think about culture until they hit adulthood. Catering to a white liberal audience is the only way I can really think this works because what do you think that conveys to readers from your culture(s)? That you rejected them for so long? And for what? Over what?