Mother, Creature, Kin - by Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Luminous nonfiction about the natural world from essayist Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder, who asks: what can other-than-human creatures teach us about mothering, belonging, caregiving, loss, and resiliency? What does it mean to be a mother in an era of climate catastrophe? And what can we learn from the plants and creatures who mother at the edges of their world's unraveling? Becoming a mother in this time means bringing life into a world that appears to be coming undone. Drawing upon ecology, mythology, and her own experiences as a new mother, Steinauer-Scudder confronts what it means to "mother": to do the good work of being in service to the living world. What if we could all mother the places we live and the beings with whom we share those places? And what if they also mother us? In prose that teems with longing, lyricism, and knowledge of ecology, Steinauer-Scudder writes of the silent flight and aural maps of barn owls, of nursing whales, of real and imagined forests, of tidal marshes, of ancient single-celled organisms, and of newly planted gardens. The creatures inhabiting these stories teach us about centering, belonging, entanglement, edge-work, homemaking, and how to imagine the future. Rooted in wonder while never shying away from loss, Mother, Creature, Kin reaches toward a language of inclusive care learned from creatures living at the brink. Writing in the tradition of Camille Dungy, Elizabeth Rush, and Margaret Renkl, Steinauer-Scudder invites us into the daily, obligatory, sacred work of care. Despair and fear will not save the world any more than they will raise our children, and while we don't know what the future holds, we know it will need mothers. As the very ground shifts beneath our feet, what if we apprenticed ourselves to the creaturely mothers with whom we share this beloved home?"--

Book Synopsis

Luminous nonfiction about the natural world from essayist Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder, who asks: what can other-than-human creatures teach us about mothering, belonging, caregiving, loss, and resiliency?

What does it mean to be a mother in an era of climate catastrophe? And what can we learn from the plants and creatures who mother at the edges of their world's unraveling?

Becoming a mother in this time means bringing life into a world that appears to be coming undone. Drawing upon ecology, mythology, and her own experiences as a new mother, Steinauer-Scudder confronts what it means to ""mother"" to do the good work of being in service to the living world. What if we could all mother the places we live and the beings with whom we share those places? And what if they also mother us?

In prose that teems with longing, lyricism, and knowledge of ecology, Steinauer-Scudder writes of the silent flight and aural maps of barn owls, of nursing whales, of real and imagined forests, of tidal marshes, of ancient single-celled organisms, and of newly planted gardens. The creatures inhabiting these stories teach us about centering, belonging, entanglement, edgework, homemaking, and how to imagine the future. Rooted in wonder while never shying away from loss, Mother, Creature, Kin reaches toward a language of inclusive care learned from creatures living at the brink.

Writing in the tradition of Camille Dungy, Elizabeth Rush, and Margaret Renkl, Steinauer-Scudder invites us into the daily, obligatory, sacred work of care. Despair and fear will not save the world any more than they will raise our children, and while we don't know what the future holds, we know it will need mothers. As the very ground shifts beneath our feet, what if we apprenticed ourselves to the creaturely mothers with whom we share this beloved home?

Review Quotes

"This is a heartachingly beautiful, deeply life-altering book, one I will be placing into the hands of many mothers, creatures, and kin. Tenderly we are reminded of all the ways in which we have become lost; all the ways we find to become found once more. On community, interconnectedness, and ecologies of care, this book has widened my heart beyond compare. There is grace here, and hope, and the light we need to guide us onward. A book for these times." --Kerri ni´ Dochartaigh, author of Thin Places and Cacophony of Bone

"This is a beautiful book--the prose, the stories, the sentiments and values. It belongs in the company of works by Ursula K. Le Guin, Rachel Carson, Terry Tempest Williams, and Robin Kimmerer, all of whom are inspiring presences in these pages. While Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder writes vividly about bearing and nurturing a child, she also invites us to understand mothering in a larger sense, as caring for all creatures--for birds and whales, trees and grasses, the entire web of life." --Scott Russell Sanders, author of The Way of Imagination

"Mother, Creature, Kin is both an education and an affirmation of our most essential and connected ways of being. Nuanced and layered, its language is a force of love." --Jamie Figueroa, author of Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer and Mother Island

"Lyrical and level-headed at once, Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder roots her elegant writing firmly in science while learning from the awe of mystics and, like the best of mothers, leads us lovingly and with utmost care and awareness through the debris of the Sixth Extinction on a path toward radical hope and wonder." --Anna Badkhen, author of Bright Unbearable Reality

"I felt that I'd been waiting for this book--you do not have to be a mother to read it. It's gentle, personal, and powerfully benign: a story of mothering as a practical expression of love, whether for a child, or a whale, or a tree, or a single-celled organism, or all these lives together." --Daisy Hildyard, author of Emergency

"A luminous, compellingly readable account of the power of wild kindness and of the extraordinary things that happen if we pay proper attention to the world. This is potent literary alchemy. Let it transform you." --Charles Foster, author of Being a Beast