Litsy

How to Read the Wilderness: An Illustrated Guide to North American Flora and Fauna | Nature Study Guild

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Great tool for acquainting the interested reader the basics of general North American outdoor plant and animal life identification. The last section about constellations was awesome!

Robotswithpersonality

Raccoon | DANIEL HEATH. JUSTICE

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Thank goodness for library displays near the self checkout.
I might have investigated this work eventually anyway, as I'd already enjoyed a non-fiction work by this author (Why Indigenous Literatures Matter), but having that raccoon face peering at me while I waited in line to check out library books made it happen a lot sooner. 1/?

Robotswithpersonality 2/? Justice's personal perspective, as an 'American-born Canadian academic of the Cherokee Nation', and someone skilled in the analysis of storytelling made this a truly unique take on a book about an animal. You definitely get a more even pairing of information and anecdote about the raccoon from both American and Canadian sources, which makes sense for an animal whose range includes both countries 1mo

Robotswithpersonality 3/? (a large swath of its native range, but not exclusively, it's also expanded greatly beyond that due to human influence), but as a Canadian lover of non-fiction, I can attest to how often subjects which have Canadian relevance are overwhelmed by data provided from American sources when written by American authors. 1mo

Robotswithpersonality 4/? Similarly, there is a concerted effort to include Indigenous stories and people as they factor into the early cultural understanding, symbolism, history and etymology of raccoons, and to diligently acknowledge instances when Indigenous culture has been twisted or ignored in pop culture depictions of raccoons. 1mo

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Robotswithpersonality 5/? Justice is also sensitive to and not dismissive of the more blatantly racist associations, and thus there is a chapter which explores the transformation of a truncated form of the raccoon's name into slur primarily associated with Black people at a certain point in time, with the care to acknowledge but not feature harmful imagery which supported that prejudiced view. 1mo

Robotswithpersonality 6/? While there is an initial chapter covering natural history, and several chapters address concerns around the animal's welfare from a human activity (climate, neglect) perspective, a lot of the book lends itself to Justice's forte as someone who examines story and meaning: how the raccoon's popular associations as a mischief-maker leant themselves to moralizing tales or served hate-filled or political rhetoric, 1mo

Robotswithpersonality 7/?!how their pelts became associated with the frontiersman image in political campaigning and nationalist nostalgia, or with a certain rebellious upwardly mobile class in the roaring 20s which subsequently fell out of favour as times and values became more conservative, yet how early Indigenous stories were as likey to see the raccoon as an important figure 1mo

Robotswithpersonality 8/8 who might teach or risk for humanity as it was to be a trickster figure, or a symbol of borderlands due to its combination of features.
I would dearly love to read more animal books with this kind of focus, and will definitely be seeking out more from this author.

⚠️racism, animal abuse, animal death 1mo

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