The associations are bizarre and contrived. Each essay is named after a natural phenomenon (plant, animal, typhoon) and makes a facile connection from that to a time in the author's life. Warm, lyrical, and gorgeously illustrated by Fumi Nakamura, World of Wonders is a book of sustenance and joy.Īn ambitious and lovely project, to interweave personal essay and nature writing, but too clumsily done for me to enjoy. For it is this way with wonder: it requires that we are curious enough to look past the distractions in order to fully appreciate the world's gifts. Even in the strange and the unlovely, Nezhukumatathil finds beauty and kinship. "What the peacock can do," she tells us, "is remind you of a home you will run away from and run back to all your life." The axolotl teaches us to smile, even in the face of unkindness the touch-me-not plant shows us how to shake off unwanted advances the narwhal demonstrates how to survive in hostile environments.
But no matter where she was transplanted-no matter how awkward the fit or forbidding the landscape-she was able to turn to our world's fierce and funny creatures for guidance. From beloved, award-winning poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil comes a debut work of nonfiction-a collection of essays about the natural world, and the way its inhabitants can teach, support, and inspire us.Īs a child, Nezhukumatathil called many places home: the grounds of a Kansas mental institution, where her Filipina mother was a doctor the open skies and tall mountains of Arizona, where she hiked with her Indian father and the chillier climes of western New York and Ohio.
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