Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless - (Great Circle Books) by Maria Pinto (Paperback)

About the Book

"Naturalist, forager, and educator Maria Pinto offers a stunning debut book that uncovers strange and beautiful fungal connections between the natural and human worlds. She mingles reportage, research, memoir, and nature writing, touching on topics that range from Black farmers' domestication of the unforgettable aroma of truffles to the history of mycological poisons wielded by enslaved people against their enslavers. Pinto brings a new perspective and a distinctive literary voice to this mix of environmental and lived history, and every page sings with her enthusiasm for the networks in which we are embedded: fungal, ecological, ancestral, and communal. Join her in pursuit of beautiful, perplexing, delicious, and deadly mushrooms as she explores this understudied kingdom's awe-inspiring diversity and discovers how fungi have been used by people, especially those on the margins, for survival, pleasure, revelation, and revolution"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

Naturalist, forager, and educator Maria Pinto offers a stunning debut book that uncovers strange and beautiful fungal connections between the natural and human worlds. She mingles reportage, research, memoir, and nature writing, touching on topics that range from Black farmers' domestication of the unforgettable aroma of truffles to the possibility that enslaved people wielded mycological poisons against their enslavers.

Pinto brings a new perspective and a distinctive literary voice to this mix of environmental and lived history, and every page sings with her enthusiasm for the networks in which we are embedded: fungal, ecological, ancestral, and communal. Join her in pursuit of beautiful, perplexing, delicious, and deadly mushrooms as she explores this understudied kingdom's awe-inspiring diversity and discovers how fungi have been used by people, especially those on the margins, for survival, pleasure, revelation, and revolution.

Review Quotes

"Maria Pinto tells a story that is as much an exploration of mycology as it is an interrogation of Indigenous traditions in the West and a tale of the author's spiritual journey. . . . Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless challenges the reader to see mushrooms as more than merely an organism to be eaten, seen, or feared. Mushrooms, Pinto argues, are the ever-present ghosts that have borne witness to the past. They are the gateway to understanding the story of civilization, and they are the Gaia that binds us all."--Science Magazine

"Pinto celebrates the interconnectedness of the natural world in this joyful mix of memoir, science, history, and adventure . . . . She ends on a poignant, hopeful note, envisioning a future for humankind inspired by fungi, made up of communities that flourish through mutual aid. With echoes of Jamaica Kincaid and Annie Dillard, this is a treat for nature lovers and mushroom aficionados."--Publishers Weekly

"Pinto has executed a singular work of Black naturalism. She's charting a different, and much-needed, path for nature writing where there is radicalism, self-love, lineage, and community in nature. The woods, she tells us, should belong to everybody. I wish I'd had this text when I was young, unmoved by other naturalists. I am glad to have it now."--Gabriel Bump, author of The New Naturals

"Reading Maria Pinto's Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless, I am stopped in my tracks again and again--admiring a string of lusciously juxtaposed words, laughing out loud at a slice of irony, thrilling at the syntax, the sentences--as her language carries, and often almost sings, the beauty and mystery and puzzlement and danger and invention and entanglement and fecundity and wonder of the mycological. And the mycophilic. I have rarely encountered such beautiful writing. I have rarely encountered such a beautiful book."--Ross Gay, author of The Book of (More) Delights

"The most daring and poignant book about fungi I've ever read. Fascinating and gorgeously written, while also being darkly funny--Pinto's prose is powerfully personal and vivid. Reading it made me ache to get up and wander into the woods."--Belle Boggs, author of The Gulf and The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine, and Motherhood

About the Author

Maria Pinto is a Boston-area writer, mycophile, and educator who was born in Jamaica and grew up in South Florida.