by Eliane Brum ; translated by Diane Whitty ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 7, 2023
A bleak, formidable chronicle of the increasingly deforested world of the Amazon.
A Brazilian reporter offers a “destructured” portrait of the Amazon’s collapse in terms of biosphere and Indigenous culture.
In her second book, following The Collector of Leftover Souls: Field Notes on Brazil’s Everyday Insurrections, Brum adopts an unconventional form to her work as a way of shedding the uncomfortable colonial connotations of her own Whiteness. The author, who lives in Altamira, in the Amazon jungle, writes with enormous empathy about the Indigenous people who, over the centuries, have learned to regard the rapacious Whites as “enemies” who have largely destroyed the Amazon rainforest. Brum describes her work with other researchers in Altamira, where she has studied historical ecology, “the field of study that explores how humans have interacted with the environment across space and time….Part of the Amazon is a cultural forest, meaning it has been sculpted over the course of thousands of years, mainly by humans, but also by nonhumans, the ones we call ‘animals,’ through their interactions with the environment.” As the author shows, most of the Indigenous people of the rainforest have been decimated by disease and violence. Brum is keenly aware of the disconnect between the White rhetoric about “ecology” and the Indigenous practice of being one with the forest, and she writes fervently about the massive deforestation that has been ongoing for decades. The author excoriates the right-wing administration of Jair Bolsonaro, elected in 2018, as having brought the country to a “climate emergency.” While connecting “with the forest and the women of the forest,” she writes, “deforestation, the destruction of nature, the contamination of rivers with mercury and pesticides—this became a lived experience of violence within my own body as well.” A relentless critic, she asserts that “exploitation by white people in the name of ‘progress’ is a political operation meant to erase everything that existed before.”
A bleak, formidable chronicle of the increasingly deforested world of the Amazon.Pub Date: March 7, 2023
ISBN: 9781644452196
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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More by Eliane Brum
BOOK REVIEW
by Eliane Brum ; translated by Diane Grosklaus Whitty
by Alok Vaid-Menon ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 2, 2020
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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More In The Series
by Shavone Charles ; illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky
by Leo Baker ; illustrated by Ashley Lukashevsky
by Judith Butler ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 19, 2024
A master class in how gender has been weaponized in support of conservative values and authoritarian regimes.
A deeply informed critique of the malicious initiatives currently using gender as a political tool to arouse fear and strengthen political and religious institutions.
In their latest book, following The Force of Nonviolence, Butler, the noted philosopher and gender studies scholar, documents and debunks the anti-gender ideology of the right, the core principle of which is that male and female are natural categories whose recognition is essential for the survival of the family, nations, and patriarchal order. Its proponents reject “sex” as a malleable category infused with prior political and cultural understandings. By turning gender into a “phantasmatic scene,” they enable those in positions of authority to deflect attention from such world-destroying forces as war, predatory capitalism, and climate change. Butler explores the ideology’s presence in the U.S., the U.K., Uganda, and Hungary, countries where legislation has limited the rights of trans and homosexual people and denied them their sexual identity. The author also delves into the ideology’s roots among Evangelicals and the Catholic Church and such political leaders as Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán. Butler is particularly bothered by trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), who treat trans women as “male predators in disguise.” For the author, “the gap between the perceived or lived body and prevailing social norms can never be fully closed.” They imagine “a world where the many relations to being socially embodied that exist become more livable” and calls for alliances across differences and “a radical democracy informed by socialist values.” Butler compensates for the thinness of some of their recommendations with an astute dissection of the ideology’s core ideas and impressive grasp of its intellectual pretensions. This is a wonderfully thoughtful and impassioned book on a critically important centerpiece of contemporary authoritarianism and patriarchy.
A master class in how gender has been weaponized in support of conservative values and authoritarian regimes.Pub Date: March 19, 2024
ISBN: 9780374608224
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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