By Jessica Hernandez, PhD

I really enjoyed listening to this book. It was like a breath of fresh air. I’m not sure how long I waited on hold for it through the library. It was many months and it was definitely worth the wait.

The author is an indigenous scientist of Binnizá and Maya Ch’orti’ descent working on Duwamish land at the University of Washington. Her perspectives on trauma, healing, environmentalism, academia and sciences, racism, and colonialism (and it’s lasting effects) all rang true to me.

I’ve been learning and thinking about colonialism in regards to parenting, and how I was parented vs. how I want to parent. I’ve also just recently begun to learn about my ancestry. As an adoptee of mixed race, I have definitely experienced feelings of displacement in a colonialist system, as she describes indigenous peoples in the modern world.

Open wounds.

I have also similarly bonded with plants with plants not in their native environments in positive ways (weeds and invasive species). Perhaps not as dramatically as the banana tree that saved her father’s life from explosives, but positively.

I also think that much of what she writes in regards to disciplines of ecology, conservation, and anthropology ring very true to me, having studied within these fields in my academic career. While I love being in the natural world and observing it, I never felt comfortable studying it academically. I am sure that this is because of how and by whom it is traditionally taught. Too many levels of displacement – language and textbooks – and too little respect for other ways of knowing. I turned to poetry instead.

Anyway, this book gave me lots to think about. I highly recommend reading it.