Portland Public Library

How I became a tree, Sumana Roy

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 235-236)

illustrations

no index present

non fiction

How I became a tree

bibliography

1241244982

Sumana Roy

"I was tired of speed. I wanted to live to tree time." So writes Sumana Roy at the start of "How I Became a Tree", her captivating, adventurous, and self-reflective vision of what it means to be human in the natural world. Drawn to trees' wisdom, their nonviolent way of being, their ability to cope with loneliness and pain, Roy movingly explores the lessons that writers, painters, photographers, scientists, and spiritual figures have gleaned through their engagement with trees, from Rabindranath Tagore to Tomas Tranströmer, Ovid to Octavio Paz, William Shakespeare to Margaret Atwood. Her stunning meditations on forests, plant life, time, self, and the exhaustion of being human evoke the spacious, relaxed rhythms of the trees themselves. Hailed upon its original publication in India as "a love song to plants and trees" and "an ode to all that is unnoticed, ill, neglected, and yet resilient", "How I Became a Tree" blends literary history, theology, philosophy, botany, and more, and ultimately prompts readers to slow down and to imagine a reenchanted world in which humans live more like trees--Publisher's description

A Tree Grew Inside My Head. Tree time -- Women as flowers -- The kindness of plants -- The woman as tree -- The silence of trees -- I Paint Flowers So They Will Not Die. Drawing trees -- Making leaves -- The literature of trees -- Tree sculpture -- Photographing trees -- See the Long Shadow that Is Cast by the Tree. Portrait of a tree -- A brief history of shadows -- X-raying plants -- Feeding light to trees -- Becoming a shadow -- Supposing I Became a Champa Flower. Rabindranath Tagore's garden -- Studying nature -- I Want to Do With You What Spring Does With the Cherry Trees. Having sex with a tree -- Loving trees -- One Tree Is Equal to Ten Sons. Plants as children -- The curious botanist -- Gardens and adultery -- Lost in the Forest. Lost in the forest -- The religion of the forest -- Wild men and lost girls -- Under the Greenwood Tree. Sitting under a tree -- The Buddha and the Bodhi tree -- The Tree Is an Eternal Corpse. The death of trees -- The rebirth of trees -- How I became a tree