I had a mostly positive experience with Braiding Sweetgrass. For the first 100 or so pages, I was captivated, moved, and motivated. I was beaming ear-to-ear about strawberries, reflecting on my own connection to the land, and reaffirming my own vows and personal ethics.

The individual essays are quite beautiful; I think I would have truly enjoyed most of them as standalones (and there were a handful of major standouts sprinkled throughout the book). But as a collection, it felt formulaic. 

We were gently but firmly led to the same mostly-vague idea and some very idealized solutions. A sprinkle of memoir-style storytelling, a reflection on the flaws of modern humans, and a vow to do better. Of course, I’m not sure how much my personal reading experience reflects the collective reading experience. The values we come around to time and time again are generally values that I already hold. I consider my relationship with nature (as best I can considering my personal limitations), I live in a way that I hope & believe is thoughtful and ethical, and so on.

For those readers that feel very removed from this line of thinking, I’m not sure Braiding Sweetgrass would initiate a new connection. Kimmerer tends to lightly mock the ‘outsiders’ in her stories, like her academically-focused undergraduate science students. A remark about a man who committed suicide in his car took me aback by its coldness. It felt like some of the compassion for fellow humans was lost.

There’s no real acknowledgement that some people are incredibly systemically distanced from the possibility of living life in this idealized way. Kimmerer references past trauma involving indigenous communities, but doesn’t quite seem to consider current reality (aside from a few sentences here and there). She’s holding these bits of old wisdom side-by-side with modernity without considering the shades of gray. It therefore sometimes felt a bit binary and naive. 

I can see wealthier white Americans feeling invigorated by this text - “ah yes, I’ll think about what I buy at the supermarket, I’ll plant and tend to a garden in my backyard, I’ll go into nature more frequently, and then I’ll feel better about myself and heal my relationship to the Earth” - but what about the rest of the country, of the world? Much of the land and many of these practices are inaccessible. And I’m not sure I buy the line of thinking that poses colonizers could perhaps become indigenous to the land … 

But again - some parts simply spoke to my heart. Some reflections were so beautiful. I do want to dream of healing, and I do want to believe wholeheartedly in the possibility of a better future. I also truly enjoyed the sprinklings of indigenous storytelling & oral tradition. 

I would love to reread an essay or two from Braiding Sweetgrass annually. I will certainly be holding on to wisdom from its pages. And maybe someday, I’ll be able to nurture a garden. :) 

CW: colonization, genocide, animal death, racism, death, grief, sexism, cultural appropriation, forced institutionalization, suicide, war, classism, pregnancy, cannibalism (mention)

Follow me on TikTok for book recommendations!