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Two Trees Make a Forest: Travels Among Taiwan's Mountains & Coasts in Search of My Family's Past
Combining an immersive exploration of nature with captivatingly beautiful prose, Jessica J. Lee embarks on a journey to discover her family's forgotten history and to connect with the island they once called home
Taiwan is an island of towering mountains, lush forests, and barren escarpment. Between shifting tectonic plates and a history rife with tension, the geographical and political landscape is forever evolving. After unearthing a hidden memoir of her grandfather's life, Jessica J. Lee seeks to piece together the fragments of her family's history as they moved from China to Taiwan, and then on to Canada. But as she navigates the tumultuous terrain of Taiwan, Lee finds herself having to traverse fissures in language, memory, and history, as she searches for the pieces of her family left behind.
Interlacing a personal narrative with Taiwan's history and terrain, Two Trees Make a Forest is an intimate examination of the human relationship with geography and nature, and offers an exploration of one woman's search for history and belonging amidst an ever-shifting landscape.
Taiwan is an island of towering mountains, lush forests, and barren escarpment. Between shifting tectonic plates and a history rife with tension, the geographical and political landscape is forever evolving. After unearthing a hidden memoir of her grandfather's life, Jessica J. Lee seeks to piece together the fragments of her family's history as they moved from China to Taiwan, and then on to Canada. But as she navigates the tumultuous terrain of Taiwan, Lee finds herself having to traverse fissures in language, memory, and history, as she searches for the pieces of her family left behind.
Interlacing a personal narrative with Taiwan's history and terrain, Two Trees Make a Forest is an intimate examination of the human relationship with geography and nature, and offers an exploration of one woman's search for history and belonging amidst an ever-shifting landscape.
203 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 28, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 654 reviews
January 25, 2021
Boring. So boring. I’m a bit of a family historian and enjoy researching my family tree and piecing together a narrative about my ancestors lives, so I can understand what Lee is trying to accomplish here. I just don’t think it holds interest for the average reader. I mean, even if you don’t find the family history boring, the long descriptions of the flora and fauna of Taiwan are sure to get you.
May 11, 2021
The trees are so tall I can hardly see their branches, their green foliage hanging in flat sprays that droop ever so slightly near their crowns, the way shaggy hair might drape around one’s neck. The greenery's sloping shape, held against the military exactitude of the trunks, resembles to me the Chinese character that builds forests: 木 mu (the wood radical). Arboreal 木 spreads wide and tall. And like timber set to work, 木 builds the words around it: 樹 shu ("tree"), 林 lin ("grove, woods, or forest") and 森林 senlin ("forest"), the multiplicity of tree shapes indicating the scale of the woodland. 木 carries a vastness of possibility, like the giants in these hills. And at their scale, just two trees would make a forest.
Jessica J. Lee is a British-Canadian author (with a Welsh father and a Taiwanese mother) who has a PhD in Environmental History and Aesthetics, and Two Trees Make a Forest is her prize-winning memoir about seeking meaning in the land of her mother. With a particular focus on the flora and fauna of Taiwan, Lee gives an account of the three months she spent there — climbing mountains and brushing up her Mandarin while exploring the history of both Taiwan and her own family — but just as her views from the tops of Taiwanese mountain peaks were usually obscured by cloud and fog, finishing this book makes me feel like something important was accomplished without me being able to quite see what it was. There is so much packed in here, not all of it totally interesting or relatable to me, and I’m not left feeling like I’ve learned much of anything; this is certainly well written at the sentence level, but didn’t add up to that something more I look for in a memoir.
Our versions of the truth so often dwell in the language we choose, but the words we use have consequences: they signify allegiances, shared histories, harms, and losses. In my childhood I heard phrases like “Taiwan, the true China” or “Chinese, but from Taiwan,” and rarely felt pressed to make sense of them. The task of naming so often exceeded me. Instead I felt a discomfort, like an amorphous thing. My complacency, I know now, was a privilege afforded by distance, by the ease of light skin and features that passed for whiteness. I do not know why we did not visit Taiwan during my childhood, and I never asked. Instead, I negotiated the world as a dual citizen of Britain and Canada, casting my life in those frames of reference. The question of whether to call myself Taiwanese or Chinese felt a complication too far. I often found myself with too many names, too many homes, and no fixed sense of which order to arrange them in. A use of just one was an erasure of another. For most of my life — until Gong’s Alzheimer’s, until his death — I gave it little thought.
Lee’s maternal grandparents (Gong and Po) were both from mainland China and met after each of them had settled in Taiwan in the concluding years of the Chinese Civil War. After only spending twenty or so years there, Gong and Po relocated to Niagara Falls, Canada with their only daughter (Lee’s mother) when she was a teenager; and as the grandparents knew that they would never be allowed to return to either China or Taiwan, theirs was a family tree without roots or branches. As neither of them liked to talk about the past, Lee was surprised to discover that her grandfather had written a meandering memoir-like letter before his death and that some biographical clues would be found among her grandmother’s effects after Po’s passing; these clues would inspire Lee’s trip to Taiwan in search of herself.
On the inside cover of Two Trees Make a Forest, it calls this “An exhilarating, anticolonial reclamation of nature writing and memoir”, and I can’t help but get hung up on that word “anticolonial”. I honestly have no idea what that means in this sense. Lee doesn’t explain anything about her absent Welsh father here (her parents divorced and Lee seems to have more closely identified with her mother’s half of her heritage, as one would), but even if she has disavowed the British half of herself, is she really half Taiwanese just because her mother was born there? And what does being “Taiwanese” really mean anyway? As she shares information about Taiwan’s history, Lee eventually explains each of the countries that colonised the island over the years — her grandparents’ flight to Taiwan coincided with the end of Japanese rule and the birth of the Republic of China (Taiwan’s official name) — so doesn’t that technically make her grandparents colonisers? With the island’s indigenous peoples (two per cent of its population) forced into the hills and out of power, and with its shaky democracy vainly attempting to prevent reabsorption into the People’s Republic of China (with most world bodies siding against Taiwan’s fight to maintain independence), what is “anticolonial” about someone of ethnic Chinese descent claiming Taiwanese heritage?
For so long I have treated Taiwan as a haunted place, guided by memories that are not mine. I’ve carried the weight of my grandfather’s death into the landscape, guilt and grief intermingled. But his death and Po’s have brought me new possibilities for knowing. Sadness has lightened, grown lean on my bones. I find in the cedar forest a place where the old trees can span all our stories, where three human generations seem small. The forest stands despite us.
One of my favourite passages: “A taxi driver asked me why my Mandarin was so good for a foreigner. ‘My mother is from Taiwan,’ I explained, and he turned on me in reprimand. ‘Then why is your Mandarin so poor?’” That feels like both the corniest old joke and an arrow to the heart of being alienated from one’s heritage; I do understand what Lee was going for with this experience and this book — I guess I’m mostly just distracted by the politics (and bored by some of the details). Through her grandmother’s effects, a distant cousin was contacted and visited, and just like that, Lee’s small family grew a little bigger. Just as with Mandarin, where adding the character for wood (木) to one more wood (木) makes a whole forest (木木), you only need one relative to join you in making a whole family. (On a side note: I see that Lee’s last book, Turning, was about her quest to swim in a different lake around Berlin, where she now lives, every week for a year, and that looks more interesting to me than this; and again, her writing is definitely strong enough to make me want to revisit her.)
November 25, 2019
(3.5) I loved Turning, Lee’s 2017 memoir about swimming in one of Berlin’s lakes per week for a year, so I jumped at the chance to read her follow-up, which delves into her maternal line’s history in Taiwan. She travels to Taipei for three months to brush up on her Chinese, write and hike. Interspersed with the lush descriptions of her walks are reflections on Taiwan’s history and on the hidden aspects of her grandfather Gong’s past that only came to light after Lee’s grandmother, Po, died and she and her mother discovered an autobiographical letter he’d written before he drifted into dementia. Nature, language, history and memory flow together in a delicate blend of genres – “I moved from the human timescale of my family’s story through green and unfurling dendrological time,” she writes.
This has got to be one of the most striking title and cover combinations of the year. Along with Chinese characters, the book includes some looping text and Nico Taylor’s maps and illustrations of Taiwanese flora and fauna. While you will likely get more out of this if you have a particular interest in Asian history, languages and culture, it’s impressive how Lee brings the different strands of her story together to form a hybrid nature memoir that I hope will be recognized by next year’s Wainwright Prize and Young Writer of the Year Award shortlists.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
This has got to be one of the most striking title and cover combinations of the year. Along with Chinese characters, the book includes some looping text and Nico Taylor’s maps and illustrations of Taiwanese flora and fauna. While you will likely get more out of this if you have a particular interest in Asian history, languages and culture, it’s impressive how Lee brings the different strands of her story together to form a hybrid nature memoir that I hope will be recognized by next year’s Wainwright Prize and Young Writer of the Year Award shortlists.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
August 9, 2020
It's been a particular pleasure in recent years to read so many books written by fellow children-now-adults of the diaspora (specifically: Taiwan); I imagine many of us wish we had such books previously, and so wrote them into existence. Lee captured a lot of my own loss/reaching (of course different, but similar) here. And finally, reading this solidly in a pandemic was a special kind of ache, but I would still recommend it.
February 24, 2021
It's another in a growing work of literary nature writing that I find I'm a sucker for. From The Overstory to Greenwood it's the personal entwined with the natural world and Lee, as an environmental historian, is uniquely poised to tackle this growing genre.
It is the history of Taiwan, a relatively young island at a spry 6-9 million years and barely 90 miles wide, variously occupied by the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese and Chinese. It is the home to thousands of endemic species specific to the island, plants that have yet to be found anywhere else. And here in this lush, damp greenery Lee explores her past after the death of her grandfather. He a pilot with the Flying Tigers during WWII who came to Canada and worked as a janitor at the Chef Boyardee factory in Niagara. Her grandmother from Nanjing who lived through the horrors inflicted there by the Japanese.
The stories never fully cohered for me. While it's a mere sliver of an island and she was never more than an hour or two away from where her grandparents lived, it felt as if she was climbing the Rockies while limply gesturing to her family's past in rural Saskatchewan. I enjoyed the nature writing but I shouldn't want less of her grandparent's history when their lives seem so ripe for storytelling.
It is the history of Taiwan, a relatively young island at a spry 6-9 million years and barely 90 miles wide, variously occupied by the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese and Chinese. It is the home to thousands of endemic species specific to the island, plants that have yet to be found anywhere else. And here in this lush, damp greenery Lee explores her past after the death of her grandfather. He a pilot with the Flying Tigers during WWII who came to Canada and worked as a janitor at the Chef Boyardee factory in Niagara. Her grandmother from Nanjing who lived through the horrors inflicted there by the Japanese.
The stories never fully cohered for me. While it's a mere sliver of an island and she was never more than an hour or two away from where her grandparents lived, it felt as if she was climbing the Rockies while limply gesturing to her family's past in rural Saskatchewan. I enjoyed the nature writing but I shouldn't want less of her grandparent's history when their lives seem so ripe for storytelling.
February 28, 2021
It makes me sad to see how many people think this memoir is boring. I understand where they are coming from, and maybe if I had read this book instead of listened to it, I may have had a harder time getting through it.
To me, this memoir was a meditation on belonging and mourning. Mourning a lost history, a lost ancestry, a lost connection....researching and learning about Taiwan is an act of mourning for this author...an attempt to piece together a broken history of family and land...a story that is foreign to you but in your blood and in the eyes of your parents and grandparents, and this disconnect is a lived reality for many families who have suffered great trauma across generations.
I think the subtext of this is really well balanced. Lee describes melancholy and hope throughout the book through her many vignettes, and she echoes the experiences of other asian immigrant stories that I have read in the past.
A lot of reviews seem to focus on the fact that Lee talks about flora and land so much...but there is an excerpt early in the text where Lee says something like “I don’t have the words to connect to this place, the only language I understand here is that of the trees, the rivers, the mountains”. And this ties into a bit at the end where Lee says something like “The character of ‘tree’ is in my name, and in the names of my family. Together we make a forest” and this is true in Chinese characters as well. Put two characters of ‘tree’ together, and you get the word ‘forest’.
When we know this, we can see how Lee is trying to piece together the ‘trees’ or her family history to build a ‘forest’. Talking about land and getting to know the shape of Taiwan is an attempt to get to know her family. There is a lot of beautiful metaphor here that I think may be lost on some readers, and that’s ok. This books isn’t for everyone.
But it has earned its place in the Canada Reads program. :)
To me, this memoir was a meditation on belonging and mourning. Mourning a lost history, a lost ancestry, a lost connection....researching and learning about Taiwan is an act of mourning for this author...an attempt to piece together a broken history of family and land...a story that is foreign to you but in your blood and in the eyes of your parents and grandparents, and this disconnect is a lived reality for many families who have suffered great trauma across generations.
I think the subtext of this is really well balanced. Lee describes melancholy and hope throughout the book through her many vignettes, and she echoes the experiences of other asian immigrant stories that I have read in the past.
A lot of reviews seem to focus on the fact that Lee talks about flora and land so much...but there is an excerpt early in the text where Lee says something like “I don’t have the words to connect to this place, the only language I understand here is that of the trees, the rivers, the mountains”. And this ties into a bit at the end where Lee says something like “The character of ‘tree’ is in my name, and in the names of my family. Together we make a forest” and this is true in Chinese characters as well. Put two characters of ‘tree’ together, and you get the word ‘forest’.
When we know this, we can see how Lee is trying to piece together the ‘trees’ or her family history to build a ‘forest’. Talking about land and getting to know the shape of Taiwan is an attempt to get to know her family. There is a lot of beautiful metaphor here that I think may be lost on some readers, and that’s ok. This books isn’t for everyone.
But it has earned its place in the Canada Reads program. :)
May 19, 2024
A compact and calming memoir-meets-history of Taiwan. The author combines nuggets of her own family's history with historical, political, and ecological information about the island nation.
I enjoyed the writing quite a bit but I did find it rather scattered in presentation.
I enjoyed the writing quite a bit but I did find it rather scattered in presentation.
December 31, 2020
Jessica J. Lee is such a beautiful writer, and Two Trees Make a Forest is such a gentle book.
I'm not typically one for nature writing; I have a hard time visualizing descriptions of the natural world, partly because I don't have the vocabulary to understand it and partly because I just find it hard to conceptualize vast landscapes in general. If you're like me, then this book will be perfect for you. Because yes, Two Trees Make a Forest is a book about the natural world--of Taiwan, specifically--but it is also a book about family and memory and narrative, and that is what really undergirds Jessica J. Lee's writing here.
I call this book "gentle" because it strikes me as the perfect word to describe the atmosphere that Jessica J. Lee creates through her writing. I listened to this on audiobook, which Lee narrates herself, and it felt like just that: gentle. Lee has the most calm, soothing voice--you can really hear the pathos behind her narration--and each section of the book is interspersed with these wind chime sounds that tie the book together in such a lovely way.
What I especially loved about this book is how deftly Jessica J. Lee weaves her family's history along with her exploration of the natural landscape of Taiwan. This is not, strictly speaking, just a book about nature in Taiwan. It's about Lee's family history, particularly that of her grandparents', and her own relationship to that history. In exploring that history, she touches on so many topics that resonated with me: the death of her grandfather and how she felt like she didn't truly know him before he died, her discovery of a narrative of himself that he had started writing before he died, her attempt to find some remaining family ties in Taiwan. And through it all, Lee stresses the significance of language: how it shapes, how it obfuscates, how it transmutes. Like I said, I have a hard time visualizing descriptions of natural landscapes, but this was not at all the case with Lee's book: her descriptions are resonant and fresh, as alive and dynamic as the natural world that she is describing.
Two Trees Make a Forest is a deeply personal and moving book, and definitely one of my favourite non-fiction reads of the year.
(thank you so much to Hamish Hamilton for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!)
I'm not typically one for nature writing; I have a hard time visualizing descriptions of the natural world, partly because I don't have the vocabulary to understand it and partly because I just find it hard to conceptualize vast landscapes in general. If you're like me, then this book will be perfect for you. Because yes, Two Trees Make a Forest is a book about the natural world--of Taiwan, specifically--but it is also a book about family and memory and narrative, and that is what really undergirds Jessica J. Lee's writing here.
I call this book "gentle" because it strikes me as the perfect word to describe the atmosphere that Jessica J. Lee creates through her writing. I listened to this on audiobook, which Lee narrates herself, and it felt like just that: gentle. Lee has the most calm, soothing voice--you can really hear the pathos behind her narration--and each section of the book is interspersed with these wind chime sounds that tie the book together in such a lovely way.
What I especially loved about this book is how deftly Jessica J. Lee weaves her family's history along with her exploration of the natural landscape of Taiwan. This is not, strictly speaking, just a book about nature in Taiwan. It's about Lee's family history, particularly that of her grandparents', and her own relationship to that history. In exploring that history, she touches on so many topics that resonated with me: the death of her grandfather and how she felt like she didn't truly know him before he died, her discovery of a narrative of himself that he had started writing before he died, her attempt to find some remaining family ties in Taiwan. And through it all, Lee stresses the significance of language: how it shapes, how it obfuscates, how it transmutes. Like I said, I have a hard time visualizing descriptions of natural landscapes, but this was not at all the case with Lee's book: her descriptions are resonant and fresh, as alive and dynamic as the natural world that she is describing.
Two Trees Make a Forest is a deeply personal and moving book, and definitely one of my favourite non-fiction reads of the year.
(thank you so much to Hamish Hamilton for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!)
Read
March 9, 2022"The geology of Taiwan tells a complex tale of emergence into air and compaction over time, of magmatic flows and stark coral limestone thrust from salt water."
• TWO TREES MAKE A FOREST: In Search of My Family's Past Among Taiwan's Mountains and Coasts by Jessica J. Lee, 2020.
#Readtheworld21 📍Taiwan
The geography and nature of the island of Taiwan // the geography and nature of a family.
Lee combines a personal nature/travelogue memoir of Taiwan with the story of her grandparents and mother who left mainland China for Taiwan, and later to Canada, where she was born. After her grandfather's passing, she and her mother find several letters with relatives they didn't know existed. Lee decides to visit and study in Taiwan with this legacy in mind, her own training and education as an environmental historian.
Living in Taipei, Lee travels and hikes extensively, in land and on the coasts. As a plant lover and hiker, I so appreciated Lee's notes from the trail about the flora and fauna, the people she meets on the way, and the ever present seismic activity on the island.
The interstitial chapters share stories from her grandparents. They were particularly moving - spanning the political and cultural history of China and Taiwan in the 20th century.
• TWO TREES MAKE A FOREST: In Search of My Family's Past Among Taiwan's Mountains and Coasts by Jessica J. Lee, 2020.
#Readtheworld21 📍Taiwan
The geography and nature of the island of Taiwan // the geography and nature of a family.
Lee combines a personal nature/travelogue memoir of Taiwan with the story of her grandparents and mother who left mainland China for Taiwan, and later to Canada, where she was born. After her grandfather's passing, she and her mother find several letters with relatives they didn't know existed. Lee decides to visit and study in Taiwan with this legacy in mind, her own training and education as an environmental historian.
Living in Taipei, Lee travels and hikes extensively, in land and on the coasts. As a plant lover and hiker, I so appreciated Lee's notes from the trail about the flora and fauna, the people she meets on the way, and the ever present seismic activity on the island.
The interstitial chapters share stories from her grandparents. They were particularly moving - spanning the political and cultural history of China and Taiwan in the 20th century.
March 15, 2021
There are memoirs so riveting and so beautifully written that they classify as great literature, worth reading by a large number of readers. And then there are memoirs, which are interesting only for a handful of related people and, honestly speaking, the literary world wouldn’t be much poorer without them. Unfortunately Jessica J. Lee’s “Two Trees Make a Forest: On Memory, Migration and Taiwan” belongs in my opinion to the latter category.
The author, born in Canada, has never lived in Taiwan and doesn’t speak Mandarin well. Her maternal grandparents emigrated to Canada when her mother was a teenager. Lee’s father is Welsh. After the death of the author’s grandfather, who after his divorce decided to move back to Taiwan, Lee decided to travel to Taiwan and discover the island for herself, through the lens of her grandparents’ past. The chapters about the author and her family are interspersed with those about the author’s hiking trips in the mountains in various regions of Taiwan. It all sounds potentially interesting and yet I was bored. The family history is the most ordinary you can imagine and related with a rather dull detachment. The hiking trips are best to be taken, not described in detail, especially as nothing really happens during them. Lee is an environmental historian and I appreciate her learning and talking about flora and fauna native to Taiwan but at times I felt like I was reading an unillustrated biology textbook with added historical data straight from Wikipedia. Some reviewers praise poetic beauty of Lee’s language but I never managed to see it as either poetic nor particularly beautiful.
I bought “Two Trees Make a Forest” as I was planning a trip to Taiwan and I still hope to explore cities, forests and mountains of that beautiful country some day. Unfortunately, Lee’s memoir failed to bring me closer to it or closer to her family. It felt like watching a documentary film narrated in an impassionate voice through a closed window. I believe the story and the experience is of significance for the author but it’s hard for me to imagine anyone else would be moved by or interested in it.
The author, born in Canada, has never lived in Taiwan and doesn’t speak Mandarin well. Her maternal grandparents emigrated to Canada when her mother was a teenager. Lee’s father is Welsh. After the death of the author’s grandfather, who after his divorce decided to move back to Taiwan, Lee decided to travel to Taiwan and discover the island for herself, through the lens of her grandparents’ past. The chapters about the author and her family are interspersed with those about the author’s hiking trips in the mountains in various regions of Taiwan. It all sounds potentially interesting and yet I was bored. The family history is the most ordinary you can imagine and related with a rather dull detachment. The hiking trips are best to be taken, not described in detail, especially as nothing really happens during them. Lee is an environmental historian and I appreciate her learning and talking about flora and fauna native to Taiwan but at times I felt like I was reading an unillustrated biology textbook with added historical data straight from Wikipedia. Some reviewers praise poetic beauty of Lee’s language but I never managed to see it as either poetic nor particularly beautiful.
I bought “Two Trees Make a Forest” as I was planning a trip to Taiwan and I still hope to explore cities, forests and mountains of that beautiful country some day. Unfortunately, Lee’s memoir failed to bring me closer to it or closer to her family. It felt like watching a documentary film narrated in an impassionate voice through a closed window. I believe the story and the experience is of significance for the author but it’s hard for me to imagine anyone else would be moved by or interested in it.
February 16, 2021
3.5 Thoughts soon.
September 15, 2020
Two Trees Make a Forest is an exhilarating, anti-colonial reclamation of nature writing and memoir perfect for fans of Margaret Renkl's Late Migrations and William Finnegan's Barbarian Days. It is an extraordinary narrative showing how geographical forces are interlaced with our family stories.
October 24, 2024
It took me more than half of this memoir to really get into it. Family stories from Taiwan are interlaced amongst our authors current treks into the beautiful, wilderness of Taiwan. A place she did not grow-up in but has strong family ties to. We learn the legacy of these ties from the stories of her grandparents that she has uncovered.
For the most part this is a clever set-up. Unfortunately the first few hikes and travels in present day that are described had far too much flora and fauna description. Entire pages dedicated to why a flower had a certain name, as language is difficult when you have Taiwanese and Mandarin dialects, English and Latin all representing the same flower. Sadly it wasn’t that interesting. Things don’t really pick-up until the last half of the book when we learn of her grandfathers time as a fighter pilot in WWII and she hikes a large mountain with incredible trees that are described.
I wish I could have read only the last half and not slogged through the first chapters. I’m sure there is an argument of building a base of knowledge about Taiwan and all the rest (especially for Western white folks like myself) but the reality was I struggled to care enough to even keep going.
If you pick this one up be sure to persevere to the last half of the memoir. It is well worth the time to get there.
For the most part this is a clever set-up. Unfortunately the first few hikes and travels in present day that are described had far too much flora and fauna description. Entire pages dedicated to why a flower had a certain name, as language is difficult when you have Taiwanese and Mandarin dialects, English and Latin all representing the same flower. Sadly it wasn’t that interesting. Things don’t really pick-up until the last half of the book when we learn of her grandfathers time as a fighter pilot in WWII and she hikes a large mountain with incredible trees that are described.
I wish I could have read only the last half and not slogged through the first chapters. I’m sure there is an argument of building a base of knowledge about Taiwan and all the rest (especially for Western white folks like myself) but the reality was I struggled to care enough to even keep going.
If you pick this one up be sure to persevere to the last half of the memoir. It is well worth the time to get there.
March 9, 2021
"... our fleeting human worlds are so easily swallowed up by nature, our fate fastened to its course. What we believe to be culture is only ever a fragment of natural world that we have sectioned off, enclosed, pearl-like, for posterity."
Two Trees Make A Forest by British Canadian Taiwanese author Jessica J. Lee is the only nonfiction shortlisted for Canada Reads 2021 and easily meets the theme "A book to transport you". This gene-shattering book encompasses history, travel, nature, and memoir.
I was quickly drawn into the author's quest to learn about the lives of her deceased Gong (Grandfather) and Po (Grandmother), and happily journeyed with her to Taiwan. Jessica J. Lee has her doctorate in environmental history and aesthetics, and has completed massive research on Taiwan's history, geography and environment. She writes, "Nearly half the amphibians and a fifth of birds, like Styan's bulbuls, are unique to this place."
"Along the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, more than five hundred species migrate. The route spans the thousands of miles between the Arctic – from Alaska to Russia - and New Zealand, taking in the entirety of the east Asian shore. The birds that travel its currents find regularity in their seasonal movements, though their coastlines are changing, whether from wetland encroachment, climate change, or industrial development. As with the spoonbills, the fortunes of migrant birds are tied to ours: to our abilities to protect them, to our willingness to afford them space in our worlds, to offerings that were never ours to give."
The author uses beautiful prose to describe her mountain hikes, explorations, flora and fauna. I googled many unfamiliar flowers, trees and birds to learn more about them.
This book should appeal to those who enjoy reading about nature, and hiking, or want to learn about Taiwan.
I enjoyed reading Two Trees Make a Forest, and learning about Jessica J. Lee's ancestry and Taiwan's history, geography and environment.
3.8 rounded up to 4 stars
Two Trees Make A Forest by British Canadian Taiwanese author Jessica J. Lee is the only nonfiction shortlisted for Canada Reads 2021 and easily meets the theme "A book to transport you". This gene-shattering book encompasses history, travel, nature, and memoir.
I was quickly drawn into the author's quest to learn about the lives of her deceased Gong (Grandfather) and Po (Grandmother), and happily journeyed with her to Taiwan. Jessica J. Lee has her doctorate in environmental history and aesthetics, and has completed massive research on Taiwan's history, geography and environment. She writes, "Nearly half the amphibians and a fifth of birds, like Styan's bulbuls, are unique to this place."
"Along the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, more than five hundred species migrate. The route spans the thousands of miles between the Arctic – from Alaska to Russia - and New Zealand, taking in the entirety of the east Asian shore. The birds that travel its currents find regularity in their seasonal movements, though their coastlines are changing, whether from wetland encroachment, climate change, or industrial development. As with the spoonbills, the fortunes of migrant birds are tied to ours: to our abilities to protect them, to our willingness to afford them space in our worlds, to offerings that were never ours to give."
The author uses beautiful prose to describe her mountain hikes, explorations, flora and fauna. I googled many unfamiliar flowers, trees and birds to learn more about them.
This book should appeal to those who enjoy reading about nature, and hiking, or want to learn about Taiwan.
I enjoyed reading Two Trees Make a Forest, and learning about Jessica J. Lee's ancestry and Taiwan's history, geography and environment.
3.8 rounded up to 4 stars
September 3, 2021
This book had everything I should like, it’s a family memoir, travel log, and a nature travel. But it lacked any pull for me.
The best way to describe it is a mix of Forgiveness by Mark Sakamoto and Beyond the Trees by Adam Shoalts. But where both have a clear progression and timeline, even with flash backs and complementary stories as the main story progresses.
What I remember about this story is the grandparents lived in Niagara, that the grandfather learnt to cook at the feet of his mother. And that the author lives in Berlin. But beyond that it’s choppy.
The structure means the author goes back to stories and constantly flushes them out. But it makes it very repetitive, they aren’t told differently but just notes the author randomly places though out the book as if they forgot to add them the first time the told the story.
So because of this, the reader gets confused or has half pictures for no reason, it’s a memoir, not a novel with a unreliable narrator. Example is the grandfather returning to Taiwan in his old age, we learn at the start of the book. Why? By whom? What for? How long?Did the grandmother die? Did they divorce? At the end of the book in a throwaway comment the author mentions that his wife took him over to be taken care of and no one from the family ever saw him again. It was distracting not to know, or to revisit it a few times.
The writing was repetitive, beyond that of stories, the words used and metaphors were over used and overstressed. It seems the author was trying to force a connection, or show the connection to the family.
I’m really sorry this is a Canada Reads book for 2021. To emphasize it, I returned the book.
The best way to describe it is a mix of Forgiveness by Mark Sakamoto and Beyond the Trees by Adam Shoalts. But where both have a clear progression and timeline, even with flash backs and complementary stories as the main story progresses.
What I remember about this story is the grandparents lived in Niagara, that the grandfather learnt to cook at the feet of his mother. And that the author lives in Berlin. But beyond that it’s choppy.
The structure means the author goes back to stories and constantly flushes them out. But it makes it very repetitive, they aren’t told differently but just notes the author randomly places though out the book as if they forgot to add them the first time the told the story.
So because of this, the reader gets confused or has half pictures for no reason, it’s a memoir, not a novel with a unreliable narrator. Example is the grandfather returning to Taiwan in his old age, we learn at the start of the book. Why? By whom? What for? How long?Did the grandmother die? Did they divorce? At the end of the book in a throwaway comment the author mentions that his wife took him over to be taken care of and no one from the family ever saw him again. It was distracting not to know, or to revisit it a few times.
The writing was repetitive, beyond that of stories, the words used and metaphors were over used and overstressed. It seems the author was trying to force a connection, or show the connection to the family.
I’m really sorry this is a Canada Reads book for 2021. To emphasize it, I returned the book.
March 6, 2021
I read this novel for Canada Reads 2021. The theme this year is "One Book To Transport Us" and I felt this memoir did that.
However, it read as more of a geography/history textbook of Taiwan and I would have preferred to read a more detailed account of the author's family and their move from China to Taiwan, and then to Canada.
However, it read as more of a geography/history textbook of Taiwan and I would have preferred to read a more detailed account of the author's family and their move from China to Taiwan, and then to Canada.
May 31, 2025
I find it rather despicable how low the average rating for this is. What excuse served the typical reader's purpose, I wonder. The author being a woman of color? The complicated nature of Taiwan when not plastered over with 'US friend/China enemy'? The environmental history focus which is because, y'know, the author is an environmental historian? Whatever the case, I'll fully admit to being unnatural in my reading pleasures, so when I took note of this book, it was for the integrated sociocultural vista rather than a family narrative: Deep Water coupled to a country from which most of my closest school friends hailed from, a haze of Chinese school sessions and Taiwanese lexicon.
What I found was a gratifyingly variegated treatise on heterogeneous upbringings, fractured histories, fraught natural landscapes, and a country actively contested and contextualized by colonization, capitalism, and climate change, gains hard won and losses tallied in languages that rarely, if ever, make the bestseller lists. The author structures it accessibly enough in the form of a travelogue, tying in historical testimony, botany, geology, warfare, linguistic confluences, political shifts, and a multiculture/country focus on one island in an eastern corner of the Pacific Ocean. Complicated, but in a way that served my multifocused brain well, especially when it went against the grain of how this corner is typically written about as well as how travelogues are typically conducted (without confusing publisher blurbs with author action). Lee admittedly doesn't have the firmest grasp on the evocative prose she was gunning for, but that's a small price to pay for the times the words do ring true and the knowledge gained throughout.
I'll admit to painting a broad and caustic brush, but if this had been written by a white boy, how much do you want to bet the winds would tilt accordingly? Because I assure you, many a reader would have either given up and left the text unrated, made the effort all the way through and gave more than a twelfth grade AI generated book report in response, or faked a four star in order to blend in before swiftly putting it behind them. So, if you're interested, genuinely interested, in Taiwan, this may do it for you. Otherwise, I'd prefer you be on your way, flocking back to pastures more suited for Eurocentric foppery.
What I found was a gratifyingly variegated treatise on heterogeneous upbringings, fractured histories, fraught natural landscapes, and a country actively contested and contextualized by colonization, capitalism, and climate change, gains hard won and losses tallied in languages that rarely, if ever, make the bestseller lists. The author structures it accessibly enough in the form of a travelogue, tying in historical testimony, botany, geology, warfare, linguistic confluences, political shifts, and a multiculture/country focus on one island in an eastern corner of the Pacific Ocean. Complicated, but in a way that served my multifocused brain well, especially when it went against the grain of how this corner is typically written about as well as how travelogues are typically conducted (without confusing publisher blurbs with author action). Lee admittedly doesn't have the firmest grasp on the evocative prose she was gunning for, but that's a small price to pay for the times the words do ring true and the knowledge gained throughout.
I'll admit to painting a broad and caustic brush, but if this had been written by a white boy, how much do you want to bet the winds would tilt accordingly? Because I assure you, many a reader would have either given up and left the text unrated, made the effort all the way through and gave more than a twelfth grade AI generated book report in response, or faked a four star in order to blend in before swiftly putting it behind them. So, if you're interested, genuinely interested, in Taiwan, this may do it for you. Otherwise, I'd prefer you be on your way, flocking back to pastures more suited for Eurocentric foppery.
[...T]he remnants of Taiwan cedar are an eldritch vision: they stand vacant with water scaling their trunks, wasted shards bleached in the sun, pointed and jagged at their tips.
November 7, 2020
I adored this memoir.
If you like nature writing mixed with memoir and family history and travel, pick up this story of a woman travelling to Taiwan, hiking through the forests and recounting her grandparents' history.
I definitely want to visit Taiwan and hike the mountains and forests there, now.
My main critique is I wish there had been more exploration of the indigenous population of Taiwan - she briefly covers the colonization history of Taiwan (by Europeans, mainland China, and Japan at alternate times) but doesn't go in depth on the original inhabitants or their language (albeit not the main focus of this book). I would have also loved to see photos of hiking spots or the flora and fauna she discusses (worth the Google search, however).
Otherwise, a fantastic nature/travel and family history memoir!
If you like nature writing mixed with memoir and family history and travel, pick up this story of a woman travelling to Taiwan, hiking through the forests and recounting her grandparents' history.
I definitely want to visit Taiwan and hike the mountains and forests there, now.
My main critique is I wish there had been more exploration of the indigenous population of Taiwan - she briefly covers the colonization history of Taiwan (by Europeans, mainland China, and Japan at alternate times) but doesn't go in depth on the original inhabitants or their language (albeit not the main focus of this book). I would have also loved to see photos of hiking spots or the flora and fauna she discusses (worth the Google search, however).
Otherwise, a fantastic nature/travel and family history memoir!
February 5, 2021
Oh my. This book is so special. Jessica J. Lee’s depiction of Taiwan’s nature and landscape is rich and gentle and vibrant. The writing is just gorgeous. She perfectly describes the bittersweet, haunting feelings of walking where others have walked before. Deep connections between family, landscape, and history are wound together so elegantly! This book is a wonderful balance of intimate emotion and fascinating knowledge.
Now, I feel like I must visit Taiwan and see the beautiful landscapes and wildlife that she has illustrated.
Now, I feel like I must visit Taiwan and see the beautiful landscapes and wildlife that she has illustrated.
March 1, 2021
I learned a whole bunch about Taiwan (note! TAIWAN & not Thailand!!). I love that the author wrote that. I found myself looking up images of wildlife and the mountains and other landscape of Taiwan. I found the map and especially the timeline extremely useful. It’s amazing how looking back through the remnants of our close relatives can not only help us see them in a completely new way but help us to understand their choices or at least empathize with them. I’m extremely grateful to Jessica J. Lee. for all the intimate details of her physical and emotional struggle through the archipelago in Taiwan and the strong pull to a homeland she was never born in but had a deep desire to relate to as a Taiwanese/Chinese & Welsh person who grew up mostly in Canada and now lives in Germany. Such an impressive background of languages. Jessica J. Lee is a swimmer, a bird watcher, a botanist and a seemingly thorough researcher. I say that because I haven’t checked the references though I’ve been having fun googling the images of the Taiwan landscape. The writer also gives a brief history of interactions with the state and competing foreign powers with the land’s Indigenous people. The memoir brought me back to the dream work done by Eleng Luluan of the Rukai Nation called Between Dreams: https://ottawacitizen.com/entertainme...
I wish there was a bit more about the Indigenous people but I know her book wasn’t necessarily about that. Or, maybe it was...great job 👌🏽
I wish there was a bit more about the Indigenous people but I know her book wasn’t necessarily about that. Or, maybe it was...great job 👌🏽
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 20, 2020
I wanted to like this much more than I did. DNF.
At first, it seemed like a wiki article. Then the opposite, “captivatingly beautiful prose” (from the book description) kicked in.
And it’s somewhere between there (dry text and fluff), where I like my books. I kept thinking...alright already...tell me some interesting stories!
At first, it seemed like a wiki article. Then the opposite, “captivatingly beautiful prose” (from the book description) kicked in.
And it’s somewhere between there (dry text and fluff), where I like my books. I kept thinking...alright already...tell me some interesting stories!
May 12, 2021
Listened to this on my commute. It is a beautiful book, I just struggled to stay engaged. I really enjoyed listening to the stories of the flora/fauna though.
April 30, 2025
This book is different things: travellogue & history of Taiwan, nature writing & a memoir about transcultural belonging and the authors grandparents. Out of those I enjoyed the bits about Taiwan the most and the history of her family second. The nature writing was not my cup of tea, because it had the same vaguely poetic style of nature writing that I have come to abhor, even though Taiwan's nature sounds lovely, of course. Overall, an interesting book that dragged and never fully came together for me, but that made me want to learn more about Taiwan.
September 15, 2022
Part travelogue, part history, part family memoir and part nature. A really nice mix of all these and more. I enjoyed listening to the story of Taiwan; it's land, plants, animals, life and history.
As the author hikes through Taiwan, exploring it's mysteries and beauties, she ponders her family's roots, emigration to Canada, and how her family's history shaped her life and outlook.
The writing is full of beautiful prose and lovely descriptions. I listened to the audio, read by the author. It was wonderfully narrated and paced. The author brought me into her story.
As the author hikes through Taiwan, exploring it's mysteries and beauties, she ponders her family's roots, emigration to Canada, and how her family's history shaped her life and outlook.
The writing is full of beautiful prose and lovely descriptions. I listened to the audio, read by the author. It was wonderfully narrated and paced. The author brought me into her story.
February 7, 2021
I just couldn't sink my teeth into anything here.
February 22, 2021
Two Trees Make a Forest was my second Canada Reads book finished. I really wanted to like it more. I enjoyed the family history (still thinking about how Po had returned Gong to a veterans home in Tawain without consulting with the family, leaving him there to die), enjoyed the descriptions of the natural habitats in Taiwan (such as "the rivers run to the sea like arteries, and the mountain spine forms a horizon") and enjoyed learning about the history of turmoil in Taiwan and China. Despite enjoying those pieces, somehow, I struggled with the combination of the text which made up the book.
I would like to know more about Gong and Po. I would like to have seen pictures of the terrain that she hiked and wildlife she saw and found myself googling as I read.
I feel like I have a strong vocabulary but was happy to have read this book on my kobo which helped as I looked up words like: olivine, culms, limning, succour, glaucous, sanitize, lepidopterist and fumaroles... I will leave you to looking them up as well!
Overall, although it was a bit of a slow read, I find myself thinking about the author's grandparents and pondering where I might like to hike!
I would like to know more about Gong and Po. I would like to have seen pictures of the terrain that she hiked and wildlife she saw and found myself googling as I read.
I feel like I have a strong vocabulary but was happy to have read this book on my kobo which helped as I looked up words like: olivine, culms, limning, succour, glaucous, sanitize, lepidopterist and fumaroles... I will leave you to looking them up as well!
Overall, although it was a bit of a slow read, I find myself thinking about the author's grandparents and pondering where I might like to hike!
May 20, 2020
A very informative history, both of a personal nature and of Taiwan as a whole, that combines memoir, nature essays, and history together. A unique read - not organized like other books of the same type I’ve read.
Taiwan has a fascinating history, and getting to read about that often dark past was interesting. I was also very invested in her grandfather’s story.
Taiwan has a fascinating history, and getting to read about that often dark past was interesting. I was also very invested in her grandfather’s story.
Read
December 22, 2020I really loved this one! A proper review to come
April 7, 2021
At one point in the book Lee is taking one of many hikes on Taiwan with a group of people and reports that while others rushed on ahead of the trail, she preferred to linger back and take her time looking at the details of the landscape and the plants. That's the feeling you get from the entire book. For me it was a little too much of looking at individual trees, and not enough of looking at the forest (if you see what I mean). As much as I admired her nature writing - so much so that I now really want to go hiking in Taiwan - there was very little in the book about her family, very little narrative, and very little greater meaning. I think perhaps this project could have been more effective as a longform journalism piece.
The coolest part of the book for me was learning what some common Chinese or Taiwanese names actually mean - Mu means wood! Shu means tree! Lin means woods! Shan means mountain! Dao means island! I totally love these two paragraphs:
"The greenery's sloping shape...resembles to me the Chinese character that builds forests: 木 mu (the wood radical). Arboreal 木 spreads wide and tall. And like timber set to work, 木 builds the words around it: 樹shu ("tree"), 林 lin ("grove, woods, or forest") and 森林 senlin ("forest"), the multiplicity of tree shapes indicating the scale of the woodland. 木 carries a vastness of possibility, like the giants in these hills. And at their scale, just two trees would make a forest.
The name of the Swedish botanist Carl Linné -- often dubbed the father of modern taxonomy -- is rendered in Chinese with the characters 林 奈, pronounced "lin nai" meaning "someone related to the forest" or "someone who endures the forest". It seems a small satisfaction that while in English we have taxonomized his name - calling him Carl Linnaeus - the Chinese, instead, layered in his name a meaning true to botany itself. I think of the wood radical in my own name, and the many that stand in my grandmother's. I find a quiet ease in the notion that forests can be built into who we are."
The coolest part of the book for me was learning what some common Chinese or Taiwanese names actually mean - Mu means wood! Shu means tree! Lin means woods! Shan means mountain! Dao means island! I totally love these two paragraphs:
"The greenery's sloping shape...resembles to me the Chinese character that builds forests: 木 mu (the wood radical). Arboreal 木 spreads wide and tall. And like timber set to work, 木 builds the words around it: 樹shu ("tree"), 林 lin ("grove, woods, or forest") and 森林 senlin ("forest"), the multiplicity of tree shapes indicating the scale of the woodland. 木 carries a vastness of possibility, like the giants in these hills. And at their scale, just two trees would make a forest.
The name of the Swedish botanist Carl Linné -- often dubbed the father of modern taxonomy -- is rendered in Chinese with the characters 林 奈, pronounced "lin nai" meaning "someone related to the forest" or "someone who endures the forest". It seems a small satisfaction that while in English we have taxonomized his name - calling him Carl Linnaeus - the Chinese, instead, layered in his name a meaning true to botany itself. I think of the wood radical in my own name, and the many that stand in my grandmother's. I find a quiet ease in the notion that forests can be built into who we are."
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