Sweet Breathing of Plants

Since prehistory, plants--as sources of food, medicine, clothing, beauty, & life itself--have been the province of women. Yet no previous book has attempted to bring together the rich literature this husbandry has inspired. This burgeoning collection amply addresses that lack, with more than three dozen selections of nonfiction & poetry. As in Intimate Nature, their previous anthology on women & animals (edited with Deena Metzger), Linda Hogan & Brenda Peterson illuminate their subject from a range of perspectives. Here are curranderas & craftswomen whose legacy of plant wisdom safeguards our connection to the green world; botanists & geneticists; & visionaries like Rachel Carson, who show us the world--and our power to protect or destroy it--in a blade of grass. Here are Rigoberta Menchu on maize, Sharman Apt Russell on the perfume of plants, Alice Walker on "revolutionary petunias," Marjorie Stoneman Douglas on the Everglades' "river of grass," Isabel Allende on the language of flowers, Susan Orlean on "Orchid Fever," Diane Ackerman on the rain forest, Kathleen Norris on "Dreaming of Trees." Here are an eloquent "ode to mold," a paean to mulch, an elegy for elders. Here is a book that celebrates an ancient & ongoing relationship in a new & appealing way.Hogan, Linda is the author of 'Sweet Breathing of Plants' with ISBN 9780865475595 and ISBN 0865475598.