Informative stories from female elders that focus on the intersection of cultural specifics and universal experiences.
Elder Indigenous women from across the world offer advice, stories and spiritual guidance in a series of autobiographical accounts, edited by Méndez and Rosencranz.
The 13 women featured in this volume met for the first time in in New York City in 2004, when they initially formed the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers. They come from Lakota, Tamang, Havasupai, Omyènè, and other heritages, and live in India, Nepal, Brazil, Gabon, Mexico, Canada, and the United States. Their shared mission is to travel to one another’s home regions to learn, share wisdom, and advocate for peace, environmental stewardship, and the sharing of cultural heritages. All were born in the early 20th century, and the accounts collected here by editors Méndez and Rosencranz offer rich and often harrowing insights into their lives as they recount times of upheaval. Tsering Dolma Gyaltong recounts her exile from China and the Chinese government’s repression of Tibetan language and culture. Margaret Behan, a Cheyenne woman, tells of experiencing abuse and alienation in boarding schools and family struggles with alcohol before finding spiritual growth with the Native American Church. Bernadette Rebienot discusses her long journey through illness—she suffered from severe headaches—and how she came to be a teacher and traditional healer in Libreville, Gabon. Although the stories are highly specific in their contexts, they effectively share common themes—difficulties with alcohol, abusive husbands, active repression of language and culture, and precarious work—which inform their perseverance, spiritual practices and family ties. Many use entheogens like mushrooms, peyote, and ayahuasca in their spiritual practices; some adhere to syncretic religious beliefs and show an openness to wisdom from the past and other cultures. The interviews clearly reveal how the women are firmly rooted in place but also highly mobile; many travel in search of work, enlightenment, or connection. The stories also feature extensive editorial commentary, but the editors are careful to leave room for their subjects’ individual voices, specific details, and practical insights into their lives and philosophies.
Informative stories from female elders that focus on the intersection of cultural specifics and universal experiences.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781957869179
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Synergetic Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 6, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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