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Reviews tagging 'Racism'
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer
52 reviews
rexpostfacto's review against another edition
4.75
Moderate: Genocide, Racial slurs, Racism, and Colonisation
Minor: Death, Hate crime, Forced institutionalization, Colonisation, and War
booknerd_therapist's review against another edition
5.0
Moderate: Grief
Minor: Death, Genocide, Racism, Violence, Xenophobia, and Colonisation
zazasaad's review against another edition
5.0
Moderate: Genocide, Racism, and Colonisation
eden_autumn's review against another edition
4.75
Moderate: Child abuse, Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Hate crime, Physical abuse, Racism, Forced institutionalization, Grief, Fire/Fire injury, Cultural appropriation, and Colonisation
Minor: Ableism and Violence
the_reading_wren's review
5.0
I highly recommend the audiobook because it is read wonderfully by the author.
Graphic: Animal death, Death, Racism, Forced institutionalization, Kidnapping, Grief, Religious bigotry, Fire/Fire injury, Cultural appropriation, Colonisation, and War
Minor: Addiction, Alcoholism, Cancer, Misogyny, Sexual content, Slavery, Vomit, Cannibalism, Religious bigotry, Stalking, Suicide attempt, Pregnancy, and Alcohol
maeverose's review against another edition
4.0
I think this book should be required reading for every non-Indigenous American. I’ve always loved nature, but this book really helped me appreciate elements of nature that I took for granted or never really thought about. Who knew cattails were so cool? This book shows how amazing and intelligent plants are. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s writing is very vivid and beautiful, and the plant science is written in an easy to understand way.
I did have two small issues with it:
Some of the language she uses when talking about women made me a bit uncomfortable. She talks a lot about motherhood in relation to womanhood, which is always a bit of a terfy red flag for me. Not to mention it’s also just regressive even when talking strictly about women. This isn’t about the parts where she writes about her own experience as a mother, of course, she’s more than allowed to do that in her own memoir lol. I understand that this could also be a matter of cultural difference, as I’m a white, so I’ll leave it at that.
Because this is a collection of essays, a lot of them are a bit repetitive. I ended up putting myself into a reading slump by reading too much of this in a short span of time, as I’m really sensitive to repetition and it started to feel tedious to read. I really should’ve read an essay a week and just gone through the book really slowly. That likely would’ve worked better for me.
Those things aside, I still think this book is really good and would strongly recommend it.
My favorite essays:
•The Counsel of Pecans
•An Offering
•Learning the Grammar of Animacy
•Maple Sugar Moon
•Witch Hazel
•Mishkos Kenomagwen: The Teachings of Grass
•Sitting in a Circle
•Defeating Windigo
Some of my favorite quotes:
“Listening in wild places, we are audience to conversations in a language not our own.”
“When we tell them that a tree is not a who, but an it, we make that maple an object; we put a barrier between us, absolving ourselves of moral responsibility and opening the door to exploitation. Saying it makes a living land into “natural resources.” If a maple is an it, we can take up a chainsaw. If a maple is a her, we think twice.”
“In a consumer society, contentment is a radical proposition. Recognizing abundance rather than scarcity undermines an economy that thrives by creating unmet desires.”
“What would it be like, I wondered, to live with that heightened sensitivity to the lives given for ours? To consider the tree in the kleenex, the algae in the toothpaste, the oaks in the floor, the grapes in the wine; to follow back the thread of life in everything and pay it respect?”
“Experiments are not about discovery but about listening and translating the knowledge of other beings.”
“It is an odd dichotomy we have set for ourselves, between loving people and loving land. We know that loving a person has agency and power—we know it can change everything. Yet we act as if loving the land is an internal affair that has no energy outside the confines of our head and heart.”
“If grief can be a doorway to love, then let us all weep for the world we are breaking apart so we can love it back to wholeness again.”
Graphic: Animal death
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Gore, Racism, Excrement, Vomit, Kidnapping, Suicide attempt, and Colonisation
Minor: Ableism and Cannibalism
Graphic: destruction of ecosystems and nature, climate change Moderate: baby/motherhood talk, animal gorebookshelfmystic's review against another edition
5.0
This book both fits into and expands my spiritual world. Robin Wall Kimmerer's cultural and scientific knowledge was new to me but is taught by a loving teacher (and Kimmerer's own voice in the audiobook added warmth to the lesson). I cried, I smiled, I thought of the Lorax, and I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone who walks on this earth.
Graphic: Colonisation
Moderate: Racism
parasolcrafter's review against another edition
5.0
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Death, Genocide, Racism, Grief, Cultural appropriation, and Colonisation
ashwaar's review against another edition
4.5
The book has its basis in science, but Kimmerer explains ecological processes so deftly and poetically that it's easy to take in. Even if you don't understand everything, the language and writing style clearly shows her love and respect for the topic. The chapters range in length and topic, but a few of my favourites include the erasure of indigenous languages, stories of tapping maple syrup trees, and rituals performed in thanks for the land.
The book acknowledges and discusses the role of indigenous knowledge in scientific understanding of the Earth and how to live in balance with our land. After reading this, I felt more compelled to pause when hiking to accept the landscapes around me and feel gratitude for them. Braiding Sweetgrass is a non-fiction book I'd recommend to almost everyone as essential reading.
Rating: 4.5/5
Read more on Wordpress at Bookmarked by Ash: https://book990337086.wordpress.com/
Graphic: Animal death, Genocide, Forced institutionalization, and Colonisation
Moderate: Death and Racism
displacedcactus's review against another edition
I could have done without the whiff of gender essentialism, with men as fire keepers and women as water bearers, and motherhood as one of the essential stages of a woman's life. But other than that one small complaint, this book was awesome.
Moderate: Animal death, Death, and Racism
The racism is all in discussions of the history of how America has treated our Indigenous people, especially with regards to residential schools, reservations, the Trail of Tears, etc.