By Robin Wall Kimmerer
581.6309 KIM 2024
Scribner, 2024. 112 pages. Nonfiction.
Robin Wall Kimmerer reflects on the practice of harvesting serviceberries and the concept of reciprocity central to Indigenous wisdom. She contrasts this with the dominant economic system rooted in scarcity, competition, and resource hoarding. Kimmerer highlights how the serviceberry tree, by sharing its abundance with its ecosystem, embodies a model of interdependence and mutual support. This ethic of reciprocity, she argues, shows us that true wealth arises from relationships, not self-sufficiency, and encourages us to reimagine our values in a way that nurtures both people and the planet.
This short book is a series of essays that can easily be read in one sitting. I enjoyed her examples of gift economies that currently exist in our capitalistic world and her hopefulness despite there being so much to not feel hopeful about. After reading this I felt a little more aware of the world around me and how I can find joy in my relationships more and my “things” a little less.
If you liked The Serviceberry, you might also like:
by William Bryant Logan
W.W Norton & Company, 2019. 332 pages. Nonfiction.
Once, farmers knew how to make a living hedge and fed their flocks on tree-branch hay. Rural people knew how to prune hazel to foster abundance: both of edible nuts, and of straight, strong, flexible rods for bridges, walls, and baskets. Townspeople cut their beeches to make charcoal to fuel ironworks. Shipwrights shaped oaks to make hulls. No place could prosper without its inhabitants knowing how to cut their trees so they would sprout again. Pruning the trees didn't destroy them. Rather, it created the healthiest, most sustainable and most diverse woodlands that we have ever known. In this journey from the English fens to Spain, Japan, and California, William Bryant Logan rediscovers what was once an everyday ecology. He offers us both practical knowledge about how to live with trees to mutual benefit and hope that humans may again learn what the persistence and generosity of trees can teach.
by Karen Armstrong
202.12 ARM
Alfred A. Knopf, 2022. 205 pages. Nonfiction.
A best-selling historian of religion, drawing on her vast knowledge of the world's religious traditions, describes nature's central place in spirituality across the centuries, showing modern readers how to rediscover nature's potency and form a connection to something greater than ourselves.
JK
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