Kinship: Vol. 1 Planet: Belonging in a World of Relations

Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations #1

by Gavin van Horn (Series Editor), Robin Wall Kimmerer (Editor), John Hausdoerffer (Editor)

Volume 1 of the Kinship series revolves around the question of planetary relations What are the sources of our deepest evolutionary and planetary connections, and of our profound longing for kinship?

We live in an astounding world of relations. We share these ties that bind with our fellow humans--and we share these relations with nonhuman beings as well. From the bacterium swimming in your belly to the trees exhaling the breath you breathe, this community of life is our kin--and, for many cultures around the world, being human is based upon this extended sense of kinship.

Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations is a lively series that explores our deep interconnections with the living world. The five Kinship volumes--Planet, Place, Partners, Persons, Practice--offer essays, interviews, poetry, and stories of solidarity, highlighting the interdependence that exists between humans and nonhuman beings. More than 70 contributors--including Robin Wall Kimmerer, Richard Powers, David Abram, J. Drew Lanham, and Sharon Blackie--invite readers into cosmologies, narratives, and everyday interactions that embrace a more-than-human world as worthy of our response and responsibility.

With every breath, every sip of water, every meal, we are reminded that our lives are inseparable from the life of the world--and the cosmos--in ways both material and spiritual. "Planet," Volume 1 of the Kinship series, focuses on our Earthen home and the cosmos within which our "pale blue dot" of a planet nestles. National poet laureate Joy Harjo opens up the volume asking us to "Remember the sky you were born under." The essayists and poets that follow--such as geologist Marcia Bjornerud who takes readers on a Deep Time journey, geophilosopher David Abram who imagines the Earth's breathing through animal migrations, and theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser who contemplates the relations between mystery and science--offer perspectives from around the world and from various cultures about what it means to be an Earthling, and all that we share in common with our planetary kin. "Remember," Harjo implores, "all is in motion, is growing, is you."

Genres: Nature, Nonfiction, Poetry, Essays, Indigenous, Ecology, Science

180 pages, Paperback

Published September 8, 2021

Reviews

[Kristina · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Kinship series is an anthology of work by authors from exceedingly diverse backgrounds - poet, geologist, botanist, taro farmer to name a few - who share a commonality in the uncommon way they see the world - as a gift.

Before this book was released the wonderful Point Reyes Books hosted a discussion about the series with editors/authors Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gain Van Horn, and John Hausdoerffer. It was a fantastic sort of extended preface to the series, with each guest expounding on what kinship means to them. The recording of that conversation can be viewed here.

Toward the end of the discussion Robin Wall Kimmerer makes a statement that I scribbled down the moment she said it, and I've revisited the video many times just to hear her say it in her beautiful way: Knowing the World is a gift is our birthright... "Then there is a conspiracy to make us forget."

And that right there is what Vol. 1 - Planet is all about - re-opening our eyes to the fact that this planet is indeed a gift.

For those of us that grew up living a consumerist lifestyle with a commodifying would view, it's no easy task. Robin again has some words of wisdom: When we pay attention and realize we're surrounded by all of these amazing beings all bearing gifts... Attention leads to gift-thinking, to thinking about the World as not something we own or posses or deserve or work for, but as a gift... That gift-understanding is what leads to gratitude, and then leads us to reciprocity, which leads us to deeply felt and deeply lived kinning.

She makes it sound so simple, and perhaps, it is. Indeed, it starts with only paying attention, something I think all of us can afford to do.

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-So, how do we live in Kinship with our planet? Again, the first step (though, we come to understand that Kinship is more of a circle than a straight line) is simply to pay attention.

-Joy Harjo's poem "Remember" is a fantastic piece to open the book. "Remember the sky you were born under"... "Remember the Earth whose skin you are".

-We talk about space as if it's some distant place that most of us will never visit. Seems logical right? But what if we zoom out from our comfy chairs, from our houses and neighborhoods. Zoom out from our states, from our continents. Zoom out until Earth is a luminous blue-green ball hanging in the dark expanse of space (As LeVar Burton said, "From up here, we all have the same address."). It becomes obvious that space is not an unattainable destination, it is our home.

-In their writing, each "-ist' (biologist, geologist, etc) is so adept at flowing from science-based ways of knowing to heart-based ways of knowing and back, that I hardly noticed the shift while reading. These world-views are generally seen as opposites warring for superiority, unable to coexist based on mutual exclusivity, but the authors show us, whether intending to or not, that this is not always the case. They communicate effortlessly their ability to see the world through a holistic lens, with both science and spirit playing an equally important role.

( A brief personal detour: My partner and I had a pretty amazing conversation while hiking through the snow on our way to a Western Red-cedar grove, thanks, in part, to this book. The two of us sometimes have difficulty communicating ideas to one another: I am more of an analytical thinker, where he is more of an emotional one. (Certainly each of us is capable of both, but I tend to default to the logical, where he defaults to the emotional). I was relating something I had read from this book (I can't remember specifically what it was, maybe something about how it takes Monarch butterflies 4 generations to get from their winter grounds to their summer grounds, and how we humans liken this ability to man-made objects because we can't comprehend it any other way) and he was actually quite engaged and was able to follow up with observations of his own. He even went on to point out some underlying connections between the seemingly disparate activities of spending time in the woods and attempting a trick on your skateboard. If I had just rattled off some factoids and said, "Neat, huh?" I don't think he would have been as receptive, but by intentionally dismissing the need to "logic" and instead just reveling in the wonder of the World, we were able to connect and converse in a meaningful way.)

-J. Drew Lanham's "A Prayer For Wildness" is the second to last entry in this volume. Equal parts disappointment and hope, his essay is a deeply moving call to action. His book "The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature" has been on my radar for a while. This sample of his writing has bumped it up to the top of my "to read" list.

-In Robin Wall Kimmerer's "A Family Reunion Near the End of the World" all the inhabitants of the Earth have come together for a potluck, even the humans who by choice have long been absent. Much scolding of the humans takes pace, and rightfully so, but Nanabozho ends with a sincere plea, "We're asking you to come home. We need you to be good relatives again. Come down off your pyramid and into the circle."

Can we humans remove ourselves from the place of superiority we've been conditioned to believe is our birthright? Can we move toward reconciliation with the land and our more-than-human kin? I think we can, and the path has already been laid out for us: Awareness, understanding, gratitude, reciprocity, kinship.

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For those interested, Point Reyes is hosting a book club type discussion via Zoom for this book December 8th, 2021, with additional discussions for each volume once a month for the next 4 months. Click here for more details.

[Eduardo Santiago · Rating 5 out of 5]

What would you say is the mark of a good anthology: loving every essay in it, or loving only some? Now that I’m old I find myself grateful for editors who take risks, who include voices I might not otherwise hear.

This is an exceptional collection. All the entries made me think, or change the way I think. Some made me work. It’s been two weeks since I finished reading, and I’m still mulling over parts of it. I love the recurring themes of language: “kinning” as an active verb, use of proper pronouns for nonhuman life forms, how our words shape (and limit) the ways we see the world around us.

[Paige Mcburney · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an absolutely wonderful book. I enjoyed all of the contributions about kinship and how we relate to those around us. The poem by Craig Santos Perez about the telescope they're trying to build in Hawaii was beautiful. The contributions by both Ginny Battson and Robin Wall Kimmerer were beautiful "In striving for the kingdom of God, the kingdom of Earth was forgotten. In that upward gaze, people lost sight of our earthly relatives and called them natural resources, instead" -Robin Wall Kimmerer. This book takes kinship beyond those who share your DNA and extends it to all life on the planet and even beyond that. 10/10 would recommend reading.

[Saivani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Our relationship with the land is beautiful and so are all the essays and poems in this book!! If you love Robin Wall Kimmerer then you’ll love all the other authors as well :)

[jac · Rating 5 out of 5]

my favourite was the beautiful essay by Dr. Manulani Aluli Meyer

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Steve Paulson: But a lot of scientists believe it's defeatist to say we will never be able to explain ultimate reality.

Marcelo Gleiser: I've been accused of being defeatist, that's so depressing. Actually, it isn't, because what it tells you is that there is no end to this pursuit. To me, it's much more depressing to conceive of an end of knowledge. We don't even know all the possible questions we can ask because they will come up as our knowledge evolves. (Living in Mystery: An Interview with Marcelo Glesier)

[Rachel Snyder Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Worth thinking about—and perhaps thanking about—are the shared threads between kinfolk, especially plantfolk, that make this breath exchange possible. Your life, my life, all of our lives depend on the quality of relations between us—the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat and the food we become—within an exuberant, life-generating planetary tangle capable of nurturing intelligences that can spin webs and words.”

This is the latest literary venture from Robin Wall Kimmerer (as an editor and contributor). Those of you who have asked me what my favorite book is (impossible question, and I’ll give you 5-10 instead), know that Braiding Sweetgrass is at the top of my list every time. My dad bought this set to read himself, but he is graciously letting me have first pass. The first of five volumes, Planet collection of poems and essays on kinship with Earth, and with every living thing, where have fallen short and what we can do to right the relationship.

From an Indigenous Hawaiian understanding of nature and a Devonshire woman’s ode to wild swimming to an essay advocating for esteem rather than triumphalism for our “sister satellite,” the Moon and a history of wildness from a First Nations member, this selection of writings is simply excellent and spans the globe! I cannot wait to dig into Volume 2: Place.

[Hannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved the idea of this book and the editors' intentions. I liked a couple of the essays and really loved Robin Wall Kimmerer's contribution but I had to skim through most of them as I could not understand the language

[Carrissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This stories ranged from emotionally evocative, undeniably five star (Ku’u ‘Aina Aloha, My Beloved Land: Interspecies Kinship in Hawai’i and A Family Reunion near the End of the World) to indecipherable and pompous two stars (Wild Ethics and Participatory Science: Thinking Between the Body and the Breathing Earth). Overall I’m excited to read more in the next four books!

[André · Rating 5 out of 5]

Profundamente necessário e magnificamente especial este livro, apenas início de um conjunto de cinco, que, por suas vezes, são conjuntos de tantas mas tantas vozes.
Agradeço em especial à Robin Wall Kimmerer, cujo ensaio aqui me comoveu ao ponto de deixar cair fluentes em desejo de uma religação a estas relações que caem sobre o termo kinship, com uma história tão bela e tão profunda; ao David Abram, que é sempre tão preciso na sua formulação da ética selvagem e me convida a essa prática há algum tempo; ao Andrew S. Yang que me fez olhar para cima em busca da família estelar, o lugar maternal que é a Via Láctea; à Manulani Aluli Meyer, pela abertura da relação às chuvas, aos ventos e às pedras, na sua riqueza de faces e nomes; ao J. Drew Lanham, pelo olhar tão desolado e esperançoso ao mesmo tempo, em oração comum por um mundo melhor e eminentemente selvagem; e aos poetas que se encontram nos interstícios dos ensaios, guardando nas mãos visões potentes, inspiradas e inspiradoras. Obrigado a todos. Posso vos dizer que, mesmo revendo-me bastante aqui antes de ler estas palavras, este encontro foi mesmo transformador para mim. Projectemo-nos em conjunto no futuro, porque ser parente (kin) é ter um futuro em comum, como nos diz Nanabozho.
Que necessário é afirmar a nossa relação familiar com aqueles que transcendem a nossa espécie. Que belo poder colocar a ciência e o animismo em conversa, de um modo tão aberto e certeiro. Tão admirável... Que isto nos leve rumo à confiança na visão, na nossa tão concernente visão entre parentes.
Obrigado pelas descobertas todas, as científicas e as espirituais. Qualquer vida enriquece com este saber.

[Mariana Scholzová · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Honor for humility was not shared by the newcomers. They brought along with them, as the guiding principle of human exceptionalism, the notion that our species stands alone at the top of the hierarchy, fundamentally different and superior and thus more deserving of the riches of the earth than any other.
....
In traditional healing practice, such destructive imbalance would be viewed as a sign of serious illness. Perhaps humans took ill from the cold winds at the top of the pyramid." -Robin Wall Kimmerer

Beautifully written collection of writing on the current, past and future realities of human and other kindships in the context of the world. A breath of fresh air in academic writing.

[Judy Garbo]

If you have eye issues at all or if you find columns difficult to track in online journals, STAY AWAY FROM THE EBOOK. The content was great, but the ebook forces a horizontal shift on your device which makes it really hard to read. I don't understand why it was uploaded and formatted this way. I'm not rating it because the pain of reading placed it in a very negative place for me, much to my disappointment.

[Bram · Rating 4 out of 5]

A mixed bag, but I think the good parts are good enough to merit 4 stars.

[Carina · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gentle triumph. Deeply touching, hopeful, and infuriating all at once. I can’t wait to read the others in this series.

[Sarah Shatz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I truly appreciate this book for the perspective that it is teaching me. I enjoy the challenge of shifting my colonized mind to a new way of thinking.