Robin Wall Kimmerer’s collection of essays, Braiding Sweetgrass, is an ode to the natural world. It is also an urgent address to humankind, beckoning them back to Mother Nature before it’s too late. Some essays act as drops of joy, like the pecan trees’ teachings of strength in community or Kimmerer’s reminder that Skywoman herself was an immigrant of earth. And others steep in sometimes quiet other times raging anger at humanity’s parasitic tendencies: our greed during the salmon run, our indifference while polluting Onondaga Lake, our blindness to the destruction of native species and habitats, Indigenous languages and cultural practices, and the future generations that will inherit the earth when we are gone…
Month: July 2021
Nino Cipri’s Homesick (2019), July 2021
Nino Cipri’s story collection, Homesick, is a darkly sweet pleasure to consume. From a disappearing linen closet to hauntings that manifest themselves in keys, postcards, or phone calls, this book will make you believe in histories better forgotten and futures to fear. Cipri’s experimentation goes beyond the bending of reality. They also keep their readers on their toes through the experimentation of form. One of my favorite stories titled “Which Super Little Dead Girl™ Are You?” is designed as a questionnaire. While it isn’t the first time I have come across this format for a story, it’s among the few to truly resonate with me. The glamorization of these action heroes, young girls who have died brutally, is …
Agatha Christie’s The Murder at the Vicarage, July 2021
St. Mary Mead is just another quiet English village, from “innocent” gossip shared with tea to a murder most foul. And in the vicarage no less! Quite the scandal. Who in the village has the capability to solve the murder of well-hated Colonel Protheroe? Perhaps the vicar himself whose parish is full of secrets big and small, or maybe his elderly neighbor, a woman whose green thumb and knitting needles fools none of St. Mary Mead residents…
Leandra the TBR zero 