Book Review: Wild Souls

 

Image: The color of the book is a cream background with a collage of nature illustrations in the center. There are cut up images of fish, flowers, a moth, a bird, and a cheetah. Across the top in black is "wild souls." Below that in red "freedom and flourishing in the non-human world." Across the bottom in black is "Emma Marris." There is other text too small to make out.

This is gonna be a long one as I have so many thoughts. Emma Marris' Wild Souls is an important exploration of our relationships with the more than human world. I have been looking for a book with this approach for some time. I often find myself divided between texts that examine hierarchy and control of other animals but are often limited more to domestic species or that do not tackle certain ecosystem conflicts in enough detail and other texts of science or journalism where in wild animals are treated as homogeneous categories, disposable when necessary, that humans know best how to control. Marris' decision to focus on ecology and non domesticated species for the most part while also examining anthropocentric control and framing of the natural world puts this book into a niche category that blends various points of reference and analysis.

I found most of this book to be honest and inquisitive about all of the gray areas that go into our relationships with other animals. The sources that Marris draws from are ones that I recognize from all sorts of fields including philosophy, ethics, biology, ecology, and so forth. She spends time speaking with various people and groups including visiting remote indigenous tribes and discussing their relationships with nature and other animals.

One of Marris' central questions is about the value of "nature" and what actually is "natural." It is often taken as fact that what is labeled as natural is best in terms of how humans should interfere in the lives of other animals. Yet, the definition of "natural" is often changed to suit whoever is making the decisions. What is wildness when we've altered things so much that even wild animals depend on or are destroyed by us more than anything else? How fuzzy is the binary between domestication and wildness? When should we intervene in a species adaptation to a threat we caused?

I appreciated her examination of zoos and other entertainment industries in far more honest ways than most folks writing about conservation do. Zoos are businesses with some of the best PR on the planet. I have seen people who are normally caring and cautious be duped by dishonesty and misdirection. Marris discusses how many "conservation" programs began as rebranding of an abusive industry and currently exist to increase captive populations for the purposes of profit making entertainment. Zoos encourage animal ownership as ornaments or forced companions while letting people think such exploitation is helping animals. She acknowledges what some research has shown- that the "education" zoos provide is not most visitors reason for attending nor is it effective enough to outweigh the harmful indoctrination that wild animals belong in zoos and as possessions. If children required zoos to learn and care about a species, dinosaurs would not be so prevalent in their upbringing.

Actual conservationists (some of whom will utilize the resources from zoos) support preserving wild populations while zoos breed them for domestic life and entertainment. The AZA- who many zoo defenders claim is the gold standard for "good" zoos- even used to revoke accreditation to zoos that would send elephants to sanctuary when they were old. They regularly have opposed sanctuaries as they believe they take away breeding populations for zoo attractions. Is it really conservation if it's done to deliberately deprive the individuals of freedom?

Expanding upon this, Marris explores ecology and general environmental concerns about preservation of threatened species. Is the genetic "purity" of a species more important than the survival of individuals who may benefit from hybridizing as an adaptation to human encroachment into their areas? Hybridization is sometimes characterized as a net negative for species "fitness" but this is not always the case. For instance, polar bear and grizzly bears hybridizing may provide an advantage to shifting climate and habitat. Is the treatment of introduced species- often with extreme violence and deplorable suffering for an existence that humans force them into- helpful in the long run? How does that affect humans relationships with other animals and how they see them? When is it defensible to kill one animal to save another? Is it okay to breed and feed rodents to birds of prey and a sanctuary? Is it defensible to kill cats to save native birds? How often are we choosing the easy way out only to find that it is ineffective or less effective than something that takes longer?

Marris does mostly well and discussing some of the ways that oppression ingrained in humanity affect our relationships with other species. For instance anthropocentrism, toxic masculinity, appeal to nature, speciesism (which she does not name but describes,) etc. However there are times where she does contradict herself in the text in frustrating ways. This would have been a five-star book hands down if it weren't for the weird rant she goes on in the middle about hunting, vegans, and animal farming all of which she selectively ignores information about- including in her own book- to shallowly analyze her family. It was as if all of her beliefs and assessments went out the window in order to mimic what the hunters and fishers in her family told her.

It starts off good. She discusses how remote indigenous tribes such as the Matsigenka seek to exist within an ecosystem and how this affects their hunting and views other animals. Indigenous ecosystem management is also an important topic she explores. Colonial "ownership" of land is much easier to corrupt if it isn't corrupt and ineffective from the start and less hierarchical forms of management by those who live within a space are often going to be more effective and respectful. Moving forward to indigenous people who are more integrated into cities and such, she does sometimes fall into tropes that uses the beliefs of some specific indigenous people or tribes to excuse overall anthropocentrism. I assume her intention was to show respect and not push colonial thought, but it's also colonialist to frame all indigenous people as magical Disney princesses that animals consent to lay down their lives for.

This is not to make value judgments about sustainable, and especially subsistence, indigenous hunting. This is again a massively diverse practice that has had a variety of effects and has also changed over time. The introduction of guns among other things has imbalanced ecosystems across the board and accelerated decline of many species hunted by anyone with motor vehicles and weapons. Indigenous people hunting was and is not the same across the tribes nor continents and some tribes have used cruel and wasteful methods. Some practices still today are not considered in line with ecosystem respect nor cultural tradition by other indigenous people. Some indigenous people in climates and habitats that allow for it have chosen more plant based styles of eating, even if their ancestors had not, due to the modern state of farming of other animals and reduced habitat of hunted species. Some indigenous groups, especially in the arctic, must hunt to survive whether one wants to or not. Modern day indigenous folks living in the author's neighborhood and hunting with guns are very different than the Matsigenka people residing in forests who farm crops and do not use guns nor arctic indigenous folks whose closest store charges $50 for a pound of rotting produce. Extinctions have also followed humans pretty much everywhere they migrated to when they first left Africa. People were just trying to survive much of the time with the limited information that they had. We don't need to rewrite that impossibly difficult struggle for it to be real and culture to be important. Some of these things are discussed near the end of the book which is another reason this weird section doesn't fit. Most importantly, all of these groups are very different from the author and her family and that's where this diversion gets most frustrating.

Marris portrays herself and her family's hunting as in opposition to the horrors of animal agriculture- as if she and those who hunt are all vegan outside of hunting, something I've only encountered in one single primitivist in decades of taking to people and reading hunters' words. More annoyingly, Marris then goes into the ways that she respects vegans soooooooo much for various reasons, but then details extremely ignorant taking points on the speciesism bingo card as if they counteract the positives: Vegans also kill things! Crop deaths! Forced veganism! All of course wrapped up in a ribbon of indigenous tokenization. 

She does not mention that said hunting caused countless extinctions and loss of biodiversity, including leaving only 200 white tail deer left at one point. Only with extreme taxing and regulation were SOME of the many species destroyed by hunting brought back. Deer are now imbalanced in the other direction by urbanization, habitat loss, feeding/baiting, and HUNTING of their predators as well as humans choosing to kill the biggest trophies of their species leading to evolution in reverse. She does not talk about how most of the agriculture of plants, and thus crop deaths, exist to feed farmed animals to be slaughtered for meat eaters. She does not talk about how animal agribusiness is one of the top things that pushes indigenous people off of their land, disrupts their hunting practices, and turns many into climate refugees. She does not talk about how settlers bringing over farmed animals to the Americas was one of the biggest causes of disease that wiped out massive amounts of indigenous people. All of the previous discussion about lead ammo wiping out vultures doesn't make a single appearance in discussion of her family's hunting and eating of animals. She of course did not mention that if everyone stopped consuming farmed meat today and hunted instead that the entire wild world would cease to exist in about a day or two if it even lasted that long. She portrayed her husband and the rest of her family as making balanced pacts with nature.

Refusing to properly confront many humans' reliance on excessive amounts of animal killing and consumption was a major flaw that really let me down. It made it hard for me to focus on the rest of the book because up until this point she had broken with the party line of a simplistic way of looking at a relationship to other animals based entirely on extraction and anthropocentrism. THAT SAID, to be fair, the amount of text I have spent ranting about this was a choice I made in part to include information and links I wish had been in the book. The actual section is a rather small part of the entire text. If you are like me and find yourself angry with this section, I do encourage you to move forward and read the rest. She returns to the grounded explorations of our interactions with the greater than human world eventually.

I appreciated her discussions about island ecosystems and the slaughter of introduced species. In terms of dealing with species conflicts, Marris covers many practices that were familiar to me but others that were enlightening. She offers a heinous account of rat poisoning acknowledging the severe suffering as well as how many other animals, including threatened and endangered ones, are poisoned by it. On the other side of the coin, it was exciting to read about long-term plans to train native species to adapt to introduced species that were threats to them. The idea of helping to create a set of knowledge that they then pass on to future generations is one I can definitely get behind. However long-term results are very hard for people to accept, especially if success may not be seen until after we die and the next generation takes over. I really liked the way she juxtaposed the problematic culling, including celebratory killing contests and blame campaigns, of human-introduced species with other perspectives and effective ways of solving problems. Rather than attempting to return nature to a previous state- something completely impossible- there are efforts to help nature adapt, some more invasive than others and none perfect. I learned a lot here that I had not heard about before.

Marris does well to use these sections to tie things back into discussion of hybridization as being an adaptation that may be important for survival and how adherence to false ideas of genetic purity should not be seen as correct by default. She also does finally discuss extinctions of species caused by the arrival of indigenous humans and then exponentially worsened by colonialism that lead to a cascade of extinctions and irreparable ecosystem destruction- finally combating the one sided way she discussed hunting and fishing previously.

Marris does not claim to have all of the answers and I appreciate that, as much as I wish that we had them. She and I can agree on the one bit if advice she does choose to give: "Make room for other species and fight for climate justice."

Despite the nonsensical hunting vs veganism rant, out of place and in conflict with the rest of the book, I count this book as one of my favorites examining humans' intervention in the lives of other species. I enjoyed the complex discussions and the reality that there are no perfect answers much of the time- Just less harmful ones.

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.

Book Review: A Little Queer Natural History

Image: the cover of the book is a cream background with large lettering whose cookies fade across the rainbow. Zig zagging with these words are rectangles depicting photos. The top right is a fungus, below that to the left is a dolphin, below that to the right is a plant landscape, below that to the left is a pill bug on a leaf, below that to the right is a lizard and under that a sparrow. The yext alternating with the photos is "a little queer natural History" and "Josh l davis."

Going into reading Josh L. Davis' A Little Queer Natural History, I expected something of a coffee table book: Nice photos with some captions and information and the book can certainly function that way. However, I was pleasantly surprised at how much more complex it was. There is not a ton of text in this book, but it packs a lot of information and is definitely more than just a list of facts about the greater than human world.

I have known for some time of the colonial, patriarchal, white supremacist, etc nature of some of the more widely known naturalist publications and study out in the ether. There are also plenty of issues in the sciences today of people projecting their own insecurities, anthropocentrism, inability to admit wrong, ability to accept new ideas, and so on onto their research subjects and publications. This book however gave me some details I definitely had not heard about before in regards to studies of specific species.

Many of the things that I have read which discuss instances of other species not fitting into shallow binarist and heteronormative boxes focused more on detailing what these features were than the historical resistance to understanding them. Despite ALQNH's short length, Davis manages to highlight quite well the kind of bias that is so destructive to the sciences as well as greater respect for animals including human beings.

The photographs in the book are beautiful, the descriptions of the animals are vivid and inviting. The only objection I have there is that the author sometimes refers to animals as "it" which is archaic and also not in line with what I assume are goals of the book. I expected better.

I thought a lot about what makes other species "queer" while reading this book. I generally object to labeling anything different from the norm as queer (much like many cishet academics unfortunately try to do.) It is a political identity of gender, sexuality, and connection and also reclaimation of a slur. How can we apply this to other animals for whom what we call queerness is the norm? It is a bit tricky. However, I agree with how the author has done so in this book. Because humans' studies of other animals are so entrenched with bias, we end up projecting these things onto other animals anyway such that we share the effects of queerness with them. We are connected both in the great scheme of things and with every assessment and discovery of our behavior.

The oppression that queer human beings face is both strengthened by the bias placed upon other animals and other animals suffer oppression that is based on these biases. This is not only seen in incorrect assessments of wild animals' behavior and the resistance to reporting queer expressions in their worlds, but also in domesticated settings wherein farms, zoos, breeders, etc kill, forcefully/non-consensually breed, mutilate, separate, etc gay/intersex/asexual/etc animals who they cannot treat as products of consumption/entertainment/etc.

The fragility of many of the white men, and sometimes other demographics, who have discussed the greater than human world is a warning that all of us should heed but especially those of us in naturalist communities or scientific fields. How much more could we have understood at this point if we were more open to the rest of the world not being exactly like dominant culture falsely believes we are? Humans have a way of trying to force other animals into our own oppressive boxes while also refusing to grant them the consideration of being like us enough to deserve liberation or even the mildest respect. It is a horrible dance that is captured quite well and the little snippets of history that we get when reading about the species in this book.

I'm keeping it quite general because I want people reading to have the ability to experience the specific stories anew. I will say that many of the overall lessons of the book are that there is great diversity in nature. While I do not believe naturalness in and of itself denotes whether or not something is right, those who do use this as a cudgel to oppress lgbtq people are doing so outside of reality.

It is quite sad when I think about it. What must it be like to be these people who can only see the world through ideas so stunted that they deprive themselves of understanding and wonder? Reading about the naturalists and scientists who dared think outside the box being met with such resistance is incredibly frustrating. Reading about how every discovery was (and often still is) used to further the oppression of LGBTQ people gives me feelings of anger but also of connection to other species. There is no liberation in this world if we do not confront our relationships with the vast majority of beings on this planet with us.

The species in this book also teach us that socialization, sex, intimacy, expression, and so forth do not exist solely to reproduce or further ones genes (regardless of how many otherwise educated people may still insist that this is so.) Thank dog for that.

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.

Book Review: Red Star Hustle / Apprehension

 

Images: the covers of both books in the double press are shown. Both are cyberpunk street scenes with bright neon colors. On the left is Red Star Hustle showing a night street from above with a person running downward with neon green graffiti art on the building walls. Across the top in bright red is red star hustle. Below that in yellow is nebula award winning author Sam J Miller. To the right is the second book cover showing a person standing in the center of the road viewed head on. There are buildings on both sides towering past the top of the image and a spiral galaxy can be seen in the distant sky. Across the top in yellow is Mary Robinette Kowal, hugo and nebula award winning author. Below that in large letters is Apprehension.

I was pumped to see Saga Press put out a double book like this. It has been a while since I have seen one of these fun texts where you flip it over in the middle and start anew. The draw of the book for me was a favorite author - Sam J. Miller - putting out the novel Red Star Hustle. I was not only excited to read more from him, but also to see him take on a cyberpunk space opera style that I had not previously seen from him. The bonus was getting to be introduced to a second author who I was not familiar with previously- Mary Robinette Kowal. Her entry Apprehension was attractive as a sort of crime thriller space opera of a shorter, novella length.

I have never reviewed a double before, but it seems best to just review each book. I was worried that might be a large disparity in quality between the two making them difficult to rate. Both books ended up being about 4 stars for me. Imperfect but highly enjoyable.

Red Star Hustle follows two main characters points of view: a young sex worker in space who is framed for the murder of one of his clients and an agent tasked with tracking him down. I saw that other reviews found it too sexual, but I did not. I am not into long drawn out graphic sex scenes and I did not find those in this book to be so. They captured the romance between the protagonist and his love interest- heir to a massive empire whose details I will leave out so as not to spoil things. There was a fairly decent variety of characters of varied demographics with complex flaws and strengths. Addiction is a factor tying many of the most prominent characters together at different phases- long term sobriety, acceptance and attempting to start, and one who has not fully grasped his own addiction. 

I assume the author or someone close to him is in 12 step programs because there was a lot of that in addiction discussions. As a person who owes much of my own escape from the horrors of addiction to the community found in 12 step programs, I get it. That said, I wish there was a little more variety. 12 step programs don't really work much for more than community and are highly flawed- including the demeaning of treatments that are now shown to be very effective such as suboxone and treating any mistake as something that forces you to start all over with your "clean time." Unlearning this stuff took me a bit of education and humility. I don't think 12 steps programs are bad, there are great mutual aid elements, especially within groups who splintered off and removed some of the garbage, just that they should not be considered the gold standard. I will end this tangent by saying that this represents a variety of addictions well but is limited in the solution.

Miller is excellent at world building and I really felt immersed in the spaces he created in this book from inside ships to elaborate societal structures and inequities. The complex portrayal of sex work was also welcome. I enjoyed the entire story and felt it had a satisfying ending. I do think the book needed to be longer in order to properly explore the twists and turns the story took. There are at least three different times where Aran has an epiphany seemingly out of nowhere about an elaborate plan and shift in storyline. The first one I forgave despite not knowing how he came to the conclusion. The others though were too much. I enjoyed the book enough that I gladly would have read another 100 pages if they helped integrate the twists a bit more. I am not talking about excessive exposition, but anything to show how Aran came to the conclusions he did. 

I am happy to have another Sam J Miller book on my shelf and look forward to anything he puts out next. I would love more cyberpunk stories. We essentially live in the stupidest cyberpunk timeline here in the USA at the moment and I crave something a bit more queer, flashy, and somehow uncharacteristically optimistic.

Kowal's Apprehension felt like a good piece of fiction to pick up next. It allowed me to keep my head in outer space for a little while longer. This book also had a great mix of characters. I loved that the protagonist was a badass older woman with a southern USA accent and a variety of trade histories including neurosurgery. Characters like these can sometimes be written to a fault- either a grandma character whose whole identity is that, or a older person who is exactly like everyone else. I appreciated the inclusion of things like arthritis, disability, complex trauma, fragility, etc along with wisdom, strength, perseverance, family, and so on. She's a grandma driven to protect her family as well as someone digging into a mystery.

It is difficult to speak too much more about the novella without tons of spoilers. I will say that I enjoyed the thrill ride that Kowal took me on and felt immersed in the story. I do feel the book also suffered a little from a sudden shift in the ending. The book almost feels rushed and like a different book altogether when then end is wrapped up. It would have been cool if more time was spent wrapping things up.

Overall, I was happy to experience another story from a favored author and to be introduced to a new one. I look forward to read more from both Miller and Kowal in the future.

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.

Book Review: Little Red Barns

Image: the cover of the book is a black background with cream colored writing interspersed between sequential identical icons of small red barns and a cream colored factory. The top says "little red barns." Then, divided by icons is "hiding the truth from farm to fable." Across the bottom is "Will Potter, author of green is the new red."

I am a long time follower of Will Potter. His old site Green is the New Red was a bit of a companion to me in my organizing days before my health knocked me down too much. Not only did I often feel isolated from other leftists who were frequently unwilling to face exploitation of other animals and environmental destruction as important issues, it was just a scary time all around existing through the height of the green scare. Maybe that is not a correct way to frame it, as the damage has been done, the laws like the AETA and Ag-Gag still exist, and people are still being charged with "terrorism" for things like rescuing abused animals or property destruction with no harm to the living. Back then, animal and earth activists were labeled the #1 domestic t-word threat in the USA and the feds came down on these movements like a never-ending avalanche. There are still people languishing in prison from outlandish sentences, ones who were returned to high security prison for blogging, and others who were freed due to entrapment and the state withholding evidence (but not before their lives were torn apart.) The surveillance at the time was so suffocating that even the most banal and unthreatening actions such as blogging about animal suffering or having a completely legal sidewalk protest would still attract feds. I suppose since then I have seen the feds acknowledge that nazis killing people might be a tad more important than people rescuing chickens or filming animal torture, but it is still bad.

It was exciting to see Potter put out his newest book Little Red Barns as it is an important catalogue of past and present that is very relevant to the current dystopian state of things, especially in the USA. Animal agribusiness industries have brilliant front groups and advertising that has allowed them to frequently skirt the response to blatant violence towards other animals, decimation of neighborhoods they use up and destroy, and being top causes of climate change. The myth of humane slaughter and "family" farms is a big part of that as well as the utilization of wealth to influence political action. To salvage my mental health, I chose to limit my consumption of media that speaks of harm to animals in detail many years ago. I make few exceptions. Reading this book in its entirety is one of those. Do not misunderstand me- this is not simply a book of horrific descriptions of abuse. But, there are some descriptions woven throughout the text as it is impossible to convey the reality without mention of it. Potter describes his own awakenings to this info and encourages the reader not to look away.

There is a frank discussion about media saturation with violence. When should we witness harm? What purpose does it serve? When is it responsible to look away? When does it motivate us to act and when does it desensitize us? I often see this discussion about harm to humans, but this is one of the rare times I have seen it addressed regarding harm to other animals as well. Potter is not the first, but brings it to another audience.

Given my aforementioned history, I expected to know a lot of the content in this book already. I lived through many of the things he discusses. I thought I would pick up some new info here and there while enjoying Potter's work as always. This book was a much bigger experience than that for me. There were facts like learning that the AETA was actually written in part by animal exploitation industry ceos that should not have surprised me but did. I always knew these powers were huge but did not realize they were actually writing the laws as well. I also didn't realize just how absolutely horrific and disgusting the treatment of people living in neighborhoods where these farms exist is. I knew about the shit sprayed into the air at times, the poor air and water quality, and other forms of hell. I did not realize you literally have to use your windshield wipers to see past the feces while driving and that you can never open your windows. Potter visiting these places, interviewing people, and cataloguing the experience was something I had never read before.

Potter also breaks down all of the arguments in favor of exploitation of farmed animals (and all of the resulting effects upon wild animals, environments, humans, etc) and combats them frankly. His arguments are not devoid of passion, but he relies heavily on concrete evidence and explanation of what is going on behind all of the closed doors and red tape. He shows well the connections to fascism and other forms of oppression. Near the end of the book, he discusses how seeing the big picture in regards to how all of these oppressions are interconnected was illuminating to him. The only thing I think he could have improved upon here is inclusion of the feminist organizers, writers, sanctuary workers, etc who have been discussing these ideas for some time. It would have wrapped the whole thing up nicely.

I found Potters writing style in this book to be interesting as well due to how intimate it was. He went out of his way to acknowledge his own biases and combat them in his reporting. He often writes in a more detached journalistic style, but this book is full of bits of memoir. It meant a lot to read things like this in part because of how much I related to Potter. Being aware of what occurs on these farms and slaughterhouses, what they do to the people who live in neighborhoods that rain literal shit, what they do to the soil and climate, and so on is taxing. On top of that, spending so many years doing what often feels like screaming into the void trying to change things is very defeating. It becomes more taxing when otherwise liberation minded people ignore it. Watching the same leftists who would break a window to save a dog from a hot car turn completely reactionary in regards to the suggestion that farmed animals should not suffer in the same way is beyond depressing. But, I digress. This is all a recipe for mental health crises and I was very grateful to see Potter speak frankly about it. 

Despite the level of struggle expressed, Potter still manages to end the book on a more positive note. It reminds me a bit of the book Hope without Hope. Even though we are often up against unstoppable forces, we need to keep going. There is no movement in history that was one and done. Things will always be shifting and we will always need to evolve with that. 

I definitely recommend this book to pretty much anyone. It's especially important for folks without knowledge of animal agribusiness industry, government repression, and so on- even if they don't consider these things as personally relevant. These effects spread across the planet and to other movements. It is very important for folks who believe that "humane" exploitation both exists and is easy to choose over factory farming. It is important for folks concerned with climate change. It is also a good book for folks who may already agree or think that they know the info therein. There is a lot here that I did not know. The connection and validation of personal struggles in and around these movements is also a big benefit to reading this. 

This was also posted to my goodreads and storygraph.