How I Became a Tree

This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.
Buy on Amazon Buy on BN.com Buy on Bookshop.org
*This page contains affiliate links, so we may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on our site at no additional cost to you.
Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app

1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date 31 Aug 2021 | Archive Date 11 Aug 2021
Yale University Press, London | Yale University Press

Talking about this book? Use #HowIBecameaTree #NetGalley. More hashtag tips!


Description

An exquisite, lovingly crafted meditation on plants, trees, and our place in the natural world, in the tradition of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass and Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
 
“Sumana Roy has written—grown—a radiant and wondrous book.”—Robert Macfarlane, author of The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot
 
“Beautiful. . . . Roy weaves together science, nature, personal narrative, literature, sociology, and more to keep the reader turning pages—and to turn us all into tree-lovers.”—Kateri Kramer, The Rumpus
 
“I was tired of speed. I wanted to live to tree time.” So writes Sumana Roy at the start of How I Became a Tree, her captivating, adventurous, and self-reflective vision of what it means to be human in the natural world.
 
Drawn to trees’ wisdom, their nonviolent way of being, their ability to cope with loneliness and pain, Roy movingly explores the lessons that writers, painters, photographers, scientists, and spiritual figures have gleaned through their engagement with trees—from Rabindranath Tagore to Tomas Tranströmer, Ovid to Octavio Paz, William Shakespeare to Margaret Atwood. Her stunning meditations on forests, plant life, time, self, and the exhaustion of being human evoke the spacious, relaxed rhythms of the trees themselves.
 
Hailed upon its original publication in India as “a love song to plants and trees” and “an ode to all that is unnoticed, ill, neglected, and yet resilient,” How I Became a Tree blends literary history, theology, philosophy, botany, and more, and ultimately prompts readers to slow down and to imagine a reenchanted world in which humans live more like trees.
An exquisite, lovingly crafted meditation on plants, trees, and our place in the natural world, in the tradition of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass and Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker...

Advance Praise

“Sumana Roy has written—grown—a radiant and wondrous book, which roots and branches in complex, provocative ways, helping us recognize trees for the ‘strange strangers’ they are, companion-citizens with which we think and remember, yes, but also alien beings that draw love, hate, indifference, and even lust from us humans.”—Robert Macfarlane, author of The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot

“Sumana Roy has written—grown—a radiant and wondrous book, which roots and branches in complex, provocative ways, helping us recognize trees for the ‘strange strangers’ they are, companion-citizens...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9780300260441
PRICE $28.00 (USD)
PAGES 248

Available on NetGalley

NetGalley Shelf App (EPUB)
Send to Kindle (EPUB)

Average rating from 6 members


Readers who liked this book also liked: