Zoo World
Essays
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- ¥2,600
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- ¥2,600
発行者による作品情報
“A pocket adventure for environmentalists and those who enjoy meditative writing.” —Kirkus We contain the elements of our world in archives, boxes, collections, mausoleums, history books, and museums, trying to stave off their eventual disappearance from our memory and from the earth in a futile attempt at redemption for our violence against them. In Zoo World, Mary Quade examines our propensity for damage, our relationships with other species, our troubling belief in our own dominion, and the reality that when you put something in a cage, it becomes your responsibility. Her subjects are as eclectic as mallard ducks, ancient churches, monarch butterflies, classrooms, tourism, street markets, zoos, and dairy cows and as global as migration, war, language, and climate change. Whatever the topic at hand, Zoo World considers how our stewardship of the earth and one another falls short, hoping that a more humble understanding of our place on the planet might lead not only to our mutual survival but also to the extinction of our hubris as human beings. Replete with Quade’s lyrical and observational gifts and refusing to let any of us off the hook in the name of inspiration or comfort, these essays are a fresh take on travel and nature writing, pushing both in thrilling new directions.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
These intermittently stimulating essays by poet Quade (Local Extinctions) meditate on such varied topics as climate change, the deindustrialization of Cleveland, and wildlife tourism in the Galápagos islands. Many of the selections focus on the natural world, such as "Hatch," in which Quade interweaves her recollections of caring for fatally wounded wild ducklings on her Ohio farm with an account of efforts to contain the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, suggesting that both incidents raise questions about what humans owe nature. The pieces seek insights by juxtaposing apparently unrelated topics, but the logic linking them together is sometimes difficult to discern and the results tend to meander, as in "Project Monarch" when Quade discusses frontier nostalgia in the 1970s TV show The Little House on the Prairie, the definitions of virtue proposed by philosophers throughout history, and the threat habitat loss poses to monarch butterflies. The more straightforward entries fare better, including "In the Classroom," which punctuates the horror of school shootings in the U.S. by likening them to a Cambodian high school that was turned into an execution site by the Khmer Rouge in 1976. Though sometimes too oblique for its own good, this has a few gems.
