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From the winner of James Beard, Harriet Tubman, and Whiting Awards comes a shimmering and unexpected vision of the world we inhabit together.Celebrated journalist and author Jori Lewis's stunning new book blends scientific research, myth, folklore, and cultural analysis in a lyrical literary work that observes the natural world as an entry point into understanding the traumas of our history and the unexplored dimensions of our spiritual lives.
A Natural History of the Spirits (New Press) offers profound meditations on the history of colonialism, racism, and social and ecological change, exploring such wide-ranging subjects as the reproduction crisis of the long-lived African baobab tree in the face of climate change; the evolutionary history of the watermelon and how racist stereotypes related to it developed and persist in the United States; the disquieted spirits of the Senegalese island Sangomar in the wake of new oil and gas exploration in the area; and how, by observing the habits of plants and animals, we may more deeply understand how we create home.
For readers of Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass and Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams, A Natural History of the Spirits grapples with how we have made, and continue to make, meaning of the world by reading the land, the animals, the water, and the skies.
Lewis will be joined in conversation by Sierra Crane Murdoch, author of Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman's Search for Justice in Indian Country.
Buy the book: https://www.powells.com/events/jori-lewis-9781620979631
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Powell's Books, Inc. (Powell's City of Books), 1005 W Burnside ST,Portland,OR,United States
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