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.
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..
Her stunning meditations on forests, plant life, time, self, and the exhaustion of being human evoke the spacious, relaxed rhythms of the trees themselves.
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 Transtr�mer, Ovid to Octavio Paz, William Shakespeare to Margaret Atwood.
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.
I wanted to live Tree time.
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 A Publishers Weekly Holiday Gift Guide 2021 selection I was tired of speed. . . .
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
