A Powerful and Poetic Call to Ecofeminism & Environmental Activism
“In this book Jean Bolen expresses the essence of our deep connection to and inseparability from trees.” —Alice Walker
Winner 2020 Indie Book Award for Nature/Environment
#1 New Release in Forestry, Forests & Rainforests
This masterful work by internationally known author and speaker Jean Shinoda Bolen provides an insightful look into the fusion of ecological issues and global gender politics.
Of trees and women. This book on the importance of trees grew out of Bolen’s experience mourning the loss of a Monterey pine that was cut down in her neighborhood. That, combined with her practice of walking among tall trees, led to her deep connection with trees and an understanding of their many complexities. From their anatomy and physiology, to trees as archetypal and sacred symbols, Bolen expertly explores the dynamics of ecological activism spiritual activism and sacred feminism. And, she invites us to join the movement to save trees.
Stories of those making a difference. While there is still much work to be done to address environmental problems, there are many stories of individuals and organizations rising up to make a change and help save our planet. The words and stories that Bolen weaves throughout this book are both inspirational and down-to-earth, calling us to realize what is happening to not only our trees, but our people. By writing about both the work of organizations like Greenpeace and the UN Commission on the Status of Women, Bolen highlights her passions and shares her unique vision for the world.
In Like a Tree learn more about:
- The dynamic nature of trees―from their anatomy to their role as an archetypal symbol
- Pressing social issues such as deforestation, global warming, and overpopulation
- What it means to be a “tree person”
If you enjoyed books like The Hidden Life of Trees, Wise Trees, Around the World in 80 Trees, or Braiding Sweetgrass, then you’ll love Like a Tree: How Trees, Women, and Tree People Can Save the Planet.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
1. Standing Like a Tree
2. Giving Like a Tree
3. Surviving Like a Tree
4. Sacred Like a Tree
5. Symbolic Like a Tree
6. Soulful Like a Tree
7. Wise Like a Tree: Tree People
Discussion/Reflection Questions
Resources
Index
About the Author :
Jean Shinoda Bolen, M. D., is a psychiatrist, Jungian analyst, Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, former professor of psychiatry, and an internationally known author and speaker. She is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a recipient of the Institute for Health and Healing's Pioneers in Art, Science, and the Soul of Healing Award.
The Association for the Study of Women and Mythology presented her the Demeter Award for her lifetime achievement in women's spirituality.
Dr. Bolen has authored over ten books with over a hundred foreign editions. Her book The Millionth Circle inspired The Millionth Circle Initiative (www.millonthcircle.org) and led to her involvement at the UN.
She currently maintains a private practice in Mill Valley, California.
Terry Tempest Williams has been called "a citizen writer," a writer who speaks and speaks out eloquently on behalf of an ethical stance toward life. A naturalist and fierce advocate for freedom of speech, she has consistently shown us how environmental issues are social issues that ultimately become matters of justice. "So here is my question," she asks, "what might a different kind of power look like, feel like, and can power be redistributed equitably even beyond our own species?"
Williams, like her writing, cannot be categorized. She has testified before Congress on women’s health issues, been a guest at the White House, has camped in the remote regions of Utah and Alaska wildernesses and worked as "a barefoot artist" in Rwanda.
Known for her impassioned and lyrical prose, Terry Tempest Williams is the author of the environmental literature classics Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place; An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field; Desert Quartet; Leap; Red: Passion and Patience in the Desert; The Open Space of Democracy; Finding Beauty in a Broken World; When Women Were Birds; Erosion: Essays of Undoing; The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks; and The Story of My Heart by Richard Jeffries, as rediscovered by Brooke Williams and Terry Tempest Williams. She has collaborated with photographer Fazal Sheikh on The Moon Is Behind Us, and with artist Mary Frank on A Burning Testament and What My Body Knows. She is a columnist for the magazine The Progressive.
In 2006, Williams received the Robert Marshall Award from The Wilderness Society, their highest honor given to an American citizen. She also received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Western American Literature Association and the Wallace Stegner Award given by The Center for the American West. She is the recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in creative nonfiction. In 2009, Terry Tempest Williams was featured in Ken Burns' PBS series on the national parks. In 2014, on the 50th Anniversary of the Wilderness Act, Ms. Williams received the Sierra Club’s John Muir Award honoring a distinguished record of leadership in American conservation. Williams also received the 2017 Audubon New York Award for Environmental Writing. In 2019 Terry Tempest Williams was given The Robert Kirsch Award, a lifetime achievement prize given to a writer with a substantial connection to the American West and was also elected as a member into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Terry Tempest Williams has served as the Annie Clark Tanner Fellow in the University of Utah’s Environmental Humanities Graduate Program which she co-founded in 2004; and was the Provostial Scholar at Dartmouth College, serving as a Montgomery Fellow twice. Williams is currently writer-in-residence at the Harvard Divinity School. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Orion Magazine, and numerous anthologies worldwide as a crucial voice for ecological consciousness and social change. She divides her time between Castle Valley, Utah, and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
