Eduardo Santiago
Fascinating and lovely all the way through. Part memoir, part nature guide, and, yes, part manifesto but please don't let that put you off. This is a beautiful work.
Kaishian's nature writing is exquisite. She depicts slugs, crows, mushrooms, eels lovingly: To give someone or something your attention can be a sacred act, she writes, and she does so to every creature she mentions. She blends her memoir effectively into each chapter, acknowledging her trauma (generational and personal) and her healing, her struggles with loneliness, her need for safe spaces, skillfully making each part of herself relevant and strongly tied to the chapter theme.
What I find a stretch is her desire to queerify nature: hermaphroditism in some animals, same-sex couplings in others, fungal sexual permutations, she celebrates them all as "queer" and points them out as counterexamples to cultural heteronormativity. To me, there's a different word that suits them better: "natural." Same with the whole spectrum of humanity. Does she do that as a way of finding belonging? As a way to shock readers into understanding? (Unlikely: the kind of people who think in black-white binary terms, those who need to read this book, are precisely the ones who won't). Or is my cishet privilege coming through in a way I don't recognize? I'd love to hear my queer friends' thoughts on this
Fascinating and lovely all the way through. Part memoir, part nature guide, and, yes, part manifesto but please don't let that put you off. This is a beautiful work.
Kaishian's nature writing is exquisite. She depicts slugs, crows, mushrooms, eels lovingly: To give someone or something your attention can be a sacred act, she writes, and she does so to every creature she mentions. She blends her memoir effectively into each chapter, acknowledging her trauma (generational and personal) and her healing, her struggles with loneliness, her need for safe spaces, skillfully making each part of herself relevant and strongly tied to the chapter theme.
What I find a stretch is her desire to queerify nature: hermaphroditism in some animals, same-sex couplings in others, fungal sexual permutations, she celebrates them all as "queer" and points them out as counterexamples to cultural heteronormativity. To me, there's a different word that suits them better: "natural." Same with the whole spectrum of humanity. Does she do that as a way of finding belonging? As a way to shock readers into understanding? (Unlikely: the kind of people who think in black-white binary terms, those who need to read this book, are precisely the ones who won't). Or is my cishet privilege coming through in a way I don't recognize? I'd love to hear my queer friends' thoughts on this