About this item
Highlights
- A beautifully rendered debut memoir of family, legacy, conservation, the natural world--and those who inhabit it.As a civil engineer, Sangamithra Iyer knows about resilience from studying soils and water.
- Author(s): Sangamithra Iyer
- 416 Pages
- Biography + Autobiography, Personal Memoirs
Description
Book Synopsis
A beautifully rendered debut memoir of family, legacy, conservation, the natural world--and those who inhabit it.
As a civil engineer, Sangamithra Iyer knows about resilience from studying soils and water. As an animal rights activist, she advocates for a revolution in how we value and relate to other species. And as the child of immigrants from India, she searches for submerged histories.
Animated by a series of questions--How do we disentangle ourselves from systems of harm? Is it possible to grasp the scale of planetary sorrow and emerge with truth and love as our guides, rather than despair? What is the relationship between individual action and systemic change?--this memoir takes the form of three meandering rivers, each written as a letter. Addressing the first of them to her grandfather, Iyer assembles the story of a man who embraced Gandhi's philosophy and went to work developing wells in Tamil Nadu. In a second letter, addressed to her father, she explores their shared interest in cultivating compassion for all beings. And then in a final letter, addressed to readers, she braids these explorations of her familial past with her own experiences as a woman of color and citizen of the world, always seeking ways to move beyond resignation and restore flow.
A lyrical story of lineages and an urgently needed reckoning with the ways bodies are both controlled and liberated, Governing Bodies is a timeless work with profoundly timely relevance.
Review Quotes
"Through memory, research, imagination, and profound love for the human and more than human world, Sangamithra Iyer has not so much written a book as created a utopia inside its pages. Governing Bodies is the work of a mind as agile as water, with many surprising streams feeding into the shining whole. This book does what the best books do: It helps me live."--Shruti Swamy, author of The Archer
"This project brims with loveliness; Iyer writes about family and ecology and the legacy of colonialism with enduring insight and gentle, heartbreaking passion. She delivers a subtle, meditative exploration on grief and nonviolence, an international and intergenerational voyage through shared histories and a consideration of what we owe to each other and the natural world."--Whiting Grant jury