This was such a thought provoking and meditative read. I recently bought the audiobook, which I also recommend for a gentle experience!

Sumana Roy's How I Became a Tree is her musings about nature and trees in a book that is part memoir and part nature writing. The book works best when the narrative co-opts literature (Bengali, mostly), films (a beautiful chapter on Satyajit Ray's films) and sometimes even spirituality (The Buddha and the Bodhi tree). International readers may struggle to get the context in these regional references but these chapters are nevertheless a joy to read even without. On the other hand, Roy's musings are rather simplistic in places: "Why was I so keen on becoming a tree? And was my malady exclusive to me alone?" She asks, before writing: "I gradually began to grow aware of my body's participation in this enterprise. I had never been a makeup person..." before concluding: "But I didn't know a single tree which needed to use makeup." On the whole it's an interesting take on the subject of a writer longing to be closer to nature!

Received an ARC from Yale University Press & Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

The problems I had with this book are mostly with the writing style and the central conceit of the author wanting to become a tree/describing trees as humans

. I found the latter annoying, pretentious and fake deep. As for the former, How I Became a Tree is full of phrases that made me roll my eyes, e.g:

“An epiphany wrapped me like a tendril - were trees freelancers or salaried employees?”

“I did post a photo of myself with a few of my plants, but, quite naturally, the comments were either about me or about the ‘freshness’ and ‘colour’ of the flowers and so on. Not a single person said anything about this being a happy family photograph.”

“When I returned from such dreams, an old question returned to haunt me. Why had the sight of trees never aroused me sexually?”

Coming from a scientific background, I think I prefer my nature books to have a bit more scientific insight in them, and I’ve read quite a few lately that do that well. Roy doesn’t really offer much science, and while this book is supposedly all about centring trees, it feels like the only trick in her repertoire is to anthropomorphise them. I don’t think How I Became a Tree actually succeeds in presenting the world from a tree’s perspective; it just highlights how human concepts (employment, family, etc) don’t fit trees, which is still focusing on human life. Other attempts to juxtapose humans and trees fell flat, e.g:

“Was this movement in opposite directions - northwards for the sun and southwards for water - a natural bipolarity that psychologists had, after all the head-heart romanticized allegories, called bipolar disorder in humans?”

That’s not what bipolar disorder is, and I don’t this misunderstanding/misrepresentation of a serious mental illness is clever or thought provoking. It’s just irritating.

I did like the forays into the role of trees in literature, especially Bangla literature. I also felt the concept did have potential if it was taken in a more metaphorical, less literal and serious (almost deadpan) direction. But the way it was executed felt almost self-indulgent, self-consciously twee and affected, and it just didn’t work for me.

This felt like a love letter to nature.
Sadly, I think the majority of this beautiful, poetic, sculpted piece of non-fiction, nature writing of a sort, went over my head and was too experimental in concept and design for me to fully understand and appreciate.

Had I gone in knowing even a little of Sumana Roy's culture (art history, more on the gods etc), I think I would have resonated with this on a much deeper level. As it stands, I didn't connect an awful lot and could only really appreciate the beautiful way in which Roy expressed herself and this inspiring connection she had with trees.

I think I also went into this with different expectations. I sort of had in my mind that this could be the non-fiction equivalent to Han Kang's The Vegetarian, and so that left me with a certain type of feeling when it wasn't what I thought.... Or rather, it came to be what I expected but in a way that was too intense for me to handle...I can't blame this on anyone other myself though, because I should have researched more before diving excitedly into the deep end (I mean, I can't swim, so that was always going to be a bad idea...)

Nevertheless, I reckon this will have a niche audience that will really enjoy what Roy has to say. I, unfortunately, am not a part of that audience.

I can hardly rate this book because I did not identify with the execution. While I do understand where the author is coming from, I am not to keen on narratives that compare pears to bolts. I can see this being to the taste of many other people as the questions it raises are definitely important, but the way they are tackled is not really a way that convinces me personally.

I expected this book to be less of a memoir than it is, and that is on me. I really enjoyed the collected myths and stories about trees, there are amazing things buried in this book - I still think about tree time, how the file system on my computer is a tree, how plants connect to death - I just wish I didn't have to dig for these gems in pages of yearning and meditations about shadows.

This is an odd read. The feeling of encountering some personal musings and reflections about trees across the author's personal histories and anecdotes of people who inspire the same will drive you to wonder about how strange and wonderful this world of ours could be.

I can't say I totally relate with everything in it, since some parts are hard to read and understand, especially some terms in Bengali and/or Hindi mentioned in the names of flowers and trees that are not translated. However, I struggled on this part.

Overall, the musings delighted me in how it relates from one material to another. It is not for everyone, but this book somehow opens up a space to be who we are with our own inhibitions.

Sumana Roy's "How I Became a Tree" is a book you really need to be in a mood for. Even though not challenging, it's not an easy read, as it ebbs and flows between a memoir, poetry, legend, personal stories, onirism, philosophy.

That being said, I didn't meet this book at a right time. While I was enticed by a beautiful cover, and some gems of wisdom inspired me to reflect on certain topics (i.e. a tree as an ideal sex partner), I caught myself drifting away at times. I think I reached for "How I Became a Tree" when I needed something else from a book I was reading, and Sumana Roy's work simply couldn't deliver that, hence only two stars, but I'm open to give it another chance in the future.

"It takes a child to prise open obvious etymologies of words and expose us to the sharp edges of our chairs. I had never thought of a forest as 'for rest'."

Sumana Roy's "How I Became a Tree" is an exploration of self through comparison to trees. It explores the author's adoration for plants, her inner desire to become a tree, and the steps taken in the process to liken herself to one. The book takes aspects of humanity – birth and death, love, sex, gender, communication, movement – and tries to see how they differ in trees, what similarities lie there, what effect they may have on the existence of trees. Roy also explores portrayal of trees in different artworks, from traditional art to the medium of film, and how it has varied across cultures and history.

I enjoyed this book far more at the start than at the end. It's a very insightful read, and Roy presents some interesting ideas about similarities between the life of a human and that of a tree, but towards the second half the sheer amount of references started to overwhelm, and it was harder to find her own thoughts among the citations. However, it provided a fascinating glimpse into Indian and Bengali arts, culture, and religions. I knew very little about Buddhism and Hinduism, and Roy's book was quite informative in how different religions perceive the relationship between man and nature.

This is a very quotable book. I'm not big on annotations but if I owned a physical copy, I think it'd be all tabbed and highlighted by now — my e-book is certainly full of bookmarks. "How I Became a Tree" is a book best described as calm. It may help you learn something new about yourself and how you see nature surrounding you. At the very least, it may teach you about how different cultures portray plants in their arts and media. I just sadly couldn't quite fall in love with it.

Sumana Roy’s How I Became a Tree explores botany, philosophy, spirituality, and gender roles as she trips the narrative realm fantastic to deliver mediations on “living tree time” in a world often relegated to environmental degradation and sensory deprivation. Previously published in India, where Roy is an associate professor of English and creative writing, she reflects on her artistic interactions (photography, drawing, leaf collecting—oh my!), recording leafy soundscapes, and pondering her plants' membership in her family. A growing appreciation for slowing down the pace of daily living, like Dominique Browning’s Slow Love: How I Lost My Job, Put on My Pajamas, and Found Happiness (2010) and the slow food and art movements, How I Became a Tree identifies a tree as Roy’s pas-de-deux partner and her creative license throughout wrestles with the remainder of contemporary society, expectations, and current environmental strife and climate change.

If a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound?

Yes, it’s a staid question. But what about millions of trees? Hectares of trees? Banyans and Java Plums and Indian Rosewoods? When the entire forest falls, does it too make a sound?

Sumana Roy has done quite a lot of thinking about trees. First published in India to widespread critical acclaim, Roy’s nonfiction debut How I Became A Tree is an essay collection written in the looming shadow of these questions, a commentary on the interconnection between tree life and the communities they foster. The meditations collected in the work examine the tree from all possible lenses: the tree as femininity, the tree as theology, the tree as evidence, the tree as community, the tree as hope. It is an unabashedly quirky set of essays, in which Roy discusses her childhood rejection of the flower girl in favor of tree makeup and develops a spiritual connection with the sound of wind rustling over leaves. It’s telling that to begin the work, Sumana Roy simply states “At first it was the underwear. I wanted to become a tree because trees did not wear bras.” And it is somehow more telling that this essay collection, so passionate it borders on absurd, manages to be one of the decade’s most compelling defenses of nature and all its blessings. Sometimes quiet, sometimes bold, this spiritual series of questions and reflections on tree life seems best understood as a love-letter; in the face of worldwide deforestation and environmental degradation, Roy’s work contends with every complexity to be found within a single branch. How I Became A Tree, set for publication in America on August 31st by Yale University Press, is an act of reverence, a stunning celebration of everything it means to exist in tandem with the world.

How I Became A Tree soundly rejects the construct of urgency. In the opening essay “Tree Time,” the rapid passage of time is framed as a violent act. “Holidays, vacations, weekends, the salaried life, pensions, loans” -- all are mechanisms of time exerting control, a control plant life naturally. Thus, Roy extends what she terms “Tree Time” to the whole of the collection. Roy meanders slowly between disciplines; her prose flows seamlessly from botanical discursions to theological history, ancient tradition to their modern implications. All are treated with Roy’s signature inquisitiveness, her passion for examining trees based on every logical extension. In the short “Feeding Light To Trees,” Roy questions the ethicality of christmas tree lights; in “Having Sex With A Tree” she muses on the moral differences between human and plant reproduction. As the work presses on, her analysis begins to contend with itself.


The essays tangle together; insights on thought leaders from William Shakespeare to Rabindranath Tagore twist like vines. At first glance, this collection feels braided, a composite of various narratives intertwined. Unsurprisingly though, the collection itself takes on the structure of a tree itself. Lines of tree-inspired analysis take form in each essay, but they all share the same root, the same central focus. The separate disciplines don’t just provide insight into each other, as much as they simply are extensions of one another. I’m reminded of Roy’s analysis of the forest, in which she posits that individual trees are ultimately components of an entire ecosystem. The constant flux of viewpoints centered by Roy turn the work into an ecosystem of itself, each perspective it’s own contributing organism. And as Roy establishes that “the forest has the power to turn men into trees,” the reader is reminded that they are a part of this ecosystem as well.


Sumana Roy seeks to celebrate everything beautiful about trees, and has no intention of cutting that celebration short. A near-operatic rhapsody on treehood, the collection is abstract and slow-moving. Even the sentence construction is languid; ambitious lines of prose stream across the page, sometimes spanning entire chunks of text. This is not to say the writing is bloated; rather, Roy’s prose is unconcerned with sacrificing explorative depth for quick resolutions. How I Became A Tree is a celebration of everything beautiful about trees, and Roy has no intention of cutting that celebration short. Roy demonstrates a talent for lyrical writing, mundane details that can make herbology feel at once rhapsodic or apocalyptic. It is important to note, however, that readers accustomed to the brevity of more familiar forms of nonfiction may need to adjust their expectations, and develop a willingness to explore every detail at gorgeous length. Like the gradual growth of a tree itself, How I Became A Tree is a slow burn.


And like the passive defiance of a tree, How I Became A Tree is radical in its lyricism. From a genre-wide perspective, nonfiction is craft seemingly dedicated to urgency; the traditional forms of nonfiction media - journalistic reporting, Buzzfeed-style memoirs, New Yorker thinkpieces - say their piece and say it quickly. The modern essay has an argumentative point. It may use narrative tropes or data-driven analysis to drive its reasoning, but still, its reasoning works to some inevitable conclusion. How I Became A Tree is not that essay collection. Other authors may guide their readers towards deforestation statistics, or develop a narrative surrounding Indian culture and forestry. These books have been written, and many of them have been excellent.


But Sumana Roy is not that author. Roy writes gorgeous meditations on the connection between the tree and the world, looks at the universe and asks “which tree could be their double.” The collection develops an inquisitiveness in the reader, a newfound sense of awareness. Roy did not tell me how to feel about trees; she did not guide my hand throughout the process. Rather, she simply appreciated trees unabashedly, and I found myself appreciating the trees in my life. I wasn’t provided a step-by-step guide outlining what it took to become tree-like. I can’t even outline fully what becoming more tree-like necessarily means. And yet, I feel remarkably more tree-like.


In her essay “Trees as Literature,” Roy asks the question “What if one became animal or plant through literature?” The work blends lyric and narrative, poetry and essay, in a way that forces the reader to slow, to reflect, to understand itself in symbiosis with a greater world. And in that sense, How I Became A Tree is a series of essays in which the reader becomes a tree of their own.


How I Became A Tree is a vital piece of work. Since 1990, the world’s forest cover has decreased by over 80 million hectares. Even India itself, a cultural stronghold for tree-enthusiasts, has seen forests fallen by the urgent needs of industrialization and commerce. The rapid commercial growth that has led to unparalleled climate disaster, this is an extension of time’s “spectre of violence.” The slow tree pitted against the rapid force of humanity. Sumana Roy’s work is an excellent, often haunting rejection of the brittle beauty of production, and a reminder of what it means to exist in tandem with the universe around you. How I Became A Tree is not an instruction manual on how to become bark, to grow roots. Its lessons are more subtle, hidden beyond the text. In the final lines of the final essay of the work, Roy finally answers the question: How, exactly, does one become a tree? Her answer:

“A bird came and sat on my shoulder around sunset one day. I did not move. I do not know about the bird but I was certain that in the thinning margins of that forest in Baikunthapur, I was, at last, ready to be a tree.”

Published In COUNTERCLOCK's Blog 8/21

This is an odd little book. It is like an ode to trees. It's part memoir, as the author recounts tales from her past that explain her obsession. It's partially philosophy which I cannot exactly explain other than by comparing it to Thoreau (who was also drawn to nature). It is also a reflection on trees as they appear in culture (art, religion, literature, etc.). It is beautifully written and the length is probably just right, though it did feel like it was too long at times, despite only being 200+ pages. If the description speaks to you, definitely give it a go.

This is definitely not the sort of book that I can read all in one hit. I took me several weeks, in fact, of dipping in and out. But that's ok, because this is in no sense a narrative, or a memoir, or something that particularly requires you to remember pertinent details from one moment to the next. Instead, this is a wide-ranging book on the idea of how people relate to trees (and plants in general), how humans are like and unlike trees, what we can learn from them, how various humans have written about or otherwise interpreted trees, and what it might mean for a human to be more like a tree.

Like the editor at Yale who decided to pick this up for their press - it had already been published in India - I too was captivated by the first line: "At first it was the underwear. I wanted to become a tree because trees did not wear bras."

PREACH.

Reading it in 2021 as I did, perhaps the idea that most (I'm sorry) took root (really, I am sorry) was the idea of tree time. That tight schedules and being rushed and hurried / harried and always needing to be places and do stuff at speed is just... not fun. (Especially when the pandemic makes all of that also feel like running in place.) Tree time, though? Trees, in Roy's words, show "disobedience to human time".

I don't agree with everything that Roy talks about here - I don't even agree that all of the questions she asks are relevant or useful. But I appreciate her asking them nonetheless, and therefore forcing me to consider them whether I want to or not.

Chapters range across a meditation on why flowers are seen to be attractive but not trees, in art and how children are taught to draw or paint; the ideas of x-raying plants, what the way nature is studied says about humans, what it might mean to have sex with a tree, what death means for trees and how religions connect to and reflect on trees and forests. And a lot more. Roy writes in the first person - this is an intensely personal book for all it's not a memoir; Roy examines her own memories, and reactions, and hopes and intentions and fears, throughout the book. After all, it's her musing on becoming a tree that instigates the whole thing; she reflects on her childhood experiences of trees, and how that relationship changes as she gets older; commenting on what it means to be childless and to be ageing, to be in a relationship and part of a family, and how those things are like and unlike the world of trees.

Aside from the meandering consideration of trees and how humans can be / are not like them, one thing that was particularly interesting for this Anglo Australian was the lack of cultural touchstones that I am familiar with. There were a few - a reference to Shakespeare here, Brecht there, DH Lawrence and Ovid. But much of the literature and art and philosophy referenced was foreign to me, which is only right since Roy is writing in India, and comes (I think) from a Bengali background. There are Hindi and Buddhist texts, Indian philosophers and authors... and a bunch of western authors, too, whom I'd never heard of because I don't go in for philosophy or botany in any great way.

This was an intriguing, insightful, challenging and wide-ranging consideration of plants and humanity. Well worth reading if you're feeling like humans need to, or could, learn how to be different.

I tried to like this, I really did. In part I think the fault is mine; I wasn't aware that the book would be quite so spiritual, which is not a genre I enjoy. I think if you are someone who has a holistic, spiritual view on life you may enjoy this more than I. However, this book really wasn't for me. The writing was at parts mediatory and engaging, at others purple and far-fetched. Certain chapters I found myself enjoying, but for the most part I was bored. This is a book that delivers exactly what it says it does - 'How I Became a Tree' is not just some intriguing title, it's what actually happens in the book. You get what you're promised. In my case it didn't fulfil, but if you find the blurb interesting I encourage you to try it out

Read a couple of chapters and couldn't get into the writing style. I thought I was reading a book about trees and it seemed to be more about the author growing up and dealing with civilization.

Tired of the modern world with its pressures, woes and cruelties, Roy decides to try to do what writers, artists and visionaries have done for centuries- – connect to the natural world. This is a beautiful book about the ability of nature to heal, rejuvenate and inspire.