Another excellent library book. When I read fiordeligi’s review of Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian‘s Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature, I knew I needed to read it asap. And then it took me a while for my library hold to come in.
Fairly early in the book, Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian relates a sexual assault she experienced at elementary school after she stood in front of her class and talked about slugs. I had to lie down for a bit, because I remember the ways the weird kids were punished. I was a weird kid who started hiding my weirdness when I saw other weird kids get punished by teachers and then isolated by the other kids. I can’t remember if she explicitly made that link between talking about slugs and being assaulted, implied it, or if I made the connection.
Forest Euphoria pulls elements of biography, social justice, history, and politics into discussions of science. For folks used to the typical Western based scientific work, this may be a frustrating read. I found it rich in thought provoking material. I could write twenty very different reviews of this book focusing on different aspects of the material. At various points in my life, I have been fascinated by the efforts to restore the Great Plains prairie lands, by the history of the Dismal Swamp, and by fungi. This book feeds all of that and more. I enjoyed the audiobook, and I want to have a physical copy on my shelf now.
Ultimately, queerness invites us all, regardless of our identities, to be more undefined, unclear, transitional, merging, interdependent, cooperative, and nonhierarchical—a very fungal way of being.
