Why did I love this book?
I read Braiding Sweetgrass at a time when I felt crushed by the discriminatory agendas playing out politically in the United States. I was despondent about the possibility of people learning how to live together in the face of so much trauma and entrenched division. This book gave me hope for pluricultural democracy again. Kimmerer’s artful descriptions of daily practices of cultural reclamation remind me that resistance is not always a visible or enormous revolution. Sometimes it is the silence of being able to name the uses of the vegetation we walk past.
51 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…