Why did I love this book?
If you grew up in a culture prone to separating “nature” and “people” into two separate categories, Braiding Sweetgrass is a gateway into thinking beyond this binary. Robin Wall Kimmerer, a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and a botanist, brings Indigenous and western scientific knowledge traditions together to show how plants and animals are our oldest teachers. Braiding Sweetgrass is a tour, at turns humorous and profound, through the lives of strawberries, algae, squash, goldenrod, bays, and ponds – and the people who live with them. Both a collection of essays and a field guide to creating a generous, reciprocal relationship with the communities of people and other beings we live with, Kimmerer is an invigorating read the first time through and a wise companion years down the line. Kimmerer is such a generous presence it only seems right to think of her book as opening onto the varied world of Indigenous relations with what is so insufficiently called “nature” in English. Linda Hogan’s The Radiant Lives of Animals, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s As We Have Always Done are two of many places to turn next.
52 authors picked Braiding Sweetgrass as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
Called the work of "a mesmerizing storyteller with deep compassion and memorable prose" (Publishers Weekly) and the book that, "anyone interested in natural history, botany, protecting nature, or Native American culture will love," by Library Journal, Braiding Sweetgrass is poised to be a classic of nature writing. As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer asks questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces indigenous teachings that consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers. Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take "us on a journey that is…