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bisexualwentworth 's review for:
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Braiding Sweetgrass is the top selling book at the bookstore where I just stopped working, and maybe that should have been a red flag.
This book is a collection of essays about botany, indigenous plant knowledge, the relationship between the two, and the author's relationship with both as an indigenous botanist. Kimmerer weaves together indigenous creation myths, legends, and plant traditions with personal anecdotes and knowledge gained in her own experience as a scientist.
The writing is very lyrical, and quite a few of the essays had really interesting things to say. I especially enjoyed the cattail sections and the discussions of the honorable harvest—up to a point.
Before I get into my more serious critiques of this book, I just want to note that Braiding Sweetgrass is a long book that repeats itself a LOT. I think that about a third of the word count could have been edited out without changing the content or the messaging at all.
I have no interest in policing or questioning the author's heritage or her authority to speak on indigenous issues. However, this is not a book aimed at indigenous audiences. It is aimed at neoliberal white women, and both the content and the sales are proof of that.
A lot of this book discusses the concepts of immigration and indigeneity, and this is where Kimmerer really lost me. She refers to Skywoman as an immigrant, claims that everyone (yes, including the indigenous peoples of Turtle Island) is somehow an immigrant), and then further claims that settlers can somehow "become indigenous" by just connecting with the land. This is ridiculous and unhelpful, and I think that one reason that so many white people love this book is that it makes them feel like they belong and like they don't have any responsibility to right the wrongs of their ancestors beyond like... being nice to plants.
Simultaneously, Kimmerer takes a frustratingly individualist approach to environmentalism with claims like "we can choose if we buy food or not" and of course the general assertion that we as individuals can heal the earth by just leaving gifts for plants and harvesting responsibly. There are no calls for collective actions, no demands for policy change, and very few discussions of the fact that climate destruction is an ongoing evil caused by corporations and the government and, of course, the continuing project of white supremacy. That last bit is discussed some, yes, but not nearly as much as the whole "white people can fix things by being nice to the earth" thing.
Kimmerer has a lot of beautiful and important things to say about our collective relationship with the land and our responsibility to it, as well as the important role that humans play in the ecosystem. But instead of even addressing the possibility of systemic change through, oh, I don't know, landback maybe, she spends the whole book waxing poetic about plants and then making her white readers feel good. And that's within her rights as the author! Good on her for figuring out how to sell so many copies of her book, I suppose, though making content concessions to make more money under consumerism is certainly an ironic move on the part of an author who spends much of her book speaking on the ills of consumerism and capitalism. Of course we're all doing what we can to survive in this horrible system. I simply feel weird about it here.
And why does she spend so much time talking about what a good mother she is and assuming that her daughters are going to give her grandchildren? Very strange.
And you are welcome to think that I'm just a white reviewer complaining about nothing, but my critiques are shared by several other reviews, including this one by an indigenous reviewer: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4565520935?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=2
If you love Braiding Sweetgrass, that's great. If it means a lot to you, or if you just loved the writing, or if it taught you a lot or introduced you to new topics, that's great. But it didn't really do it for me, and I find the near-universal obsession with it in the area where I live to be very frustrating.
This book is a collection of essays about botany, indigenous plant knowledge, the relationship between the two, and the author's relationship with both as an indigenous botanist. Kimmerer weaves together indigenous creation myths, legends, and plant traditions with personal anecdotes and knowledge gained in her own experience as a scientist.
The writing is very lyrical, and quite a few of the essays had really interesting things to say. I especially enjoyed the cattail sections and the discussions of the honorable harvest—up to a point.
Before I get into my more serious critiques of this book, I just want to note that Braiding Sweetgrass is a long book that repeats itself a LOT. I think that about a third of the word count could have been edited out without changing the content or the messaging at all.
I have no interest in policing or questioning the author's heritage or her authority to speak on indigenous issues. However, this is not a book aimed at indigenous audiences. It is aimed at neoliberal white women, and both the content and the sales are proof of that.
A lot of this book discusses the concepts of immigration and indigeneity, and this is where Kimmerer really lost me. She refers to Skywoman as an immigrant, claims that everyone (yes, including the indigenous peoples of Turtle Island) is somehow an immigrant), and then further claims that settlers can somehow "become indigenous" by just connecting with the land. This is ridiculous and unhelpful, and I think that one reason that so many white people love this book is that it makes them feel like they belong and like they don't have any responsibility to right the wrongs of their ancestors beyond like... being nice to plants.
Simultaneously, Kimmerer takes a frustratingly individualist approach to environmentalism with claims like "we can choose if we buy food or not" and of course the general assertion that we as individuals can heal the earth by just leaving gifts for plants and harvesting responsibly. There are no calls for collective actions, no demands for policy change, and very few discussions of the fact that climate destruction is an ongoing evil caused by corporations and the government and, of course, the continuing project of white supremacy. That last bit is discussed some, yes, but not nearly as much as the whole "white people can fix things by being nice to the earth" thing.
Kimmerer has a lot of beautiful and important things to say about our collective relationship with the land and our responsibility to it, as well as the important role that humans play in the ecosystem. But instead of even addressing the possibility of systemic change through, oh, I don't know, landback maybe, she spends the whole book waxing poetic about plants and then making her white readers feel good. And that's within her rights as the author! Good on her for figuring out how to sell so many copies of her book, I suppose, though making content concessions to make more money under consumerism is certainly an ironic move on the part of an author who spends much of her book speaking on the ills of consumerism and capitalism. Of course we're all doing what we can to survive in this horrible system. I simply feel weird about it here.
And why does she spend so much time talking about what a good mother she is and assuming that her daughters are going to give her grandchildren? Very strange.
And you are welcome to think that I'm just a white reviewer complaining about nothing, but my critiques are shared by several other reviews, including this one by an indigenous reviewer: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4565520935?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=2
If you love Braiding Sweetgrass, that's great. If it means a lot to you, or if you just loved the writing, or if it taught you a lot or introduced you to new topics, that's great. But it didn't really do it for me, and I find the near-universal obsession with it in the area where I live to be very frustrating.