by Patricia Ononiwu Kaishia
Spiegel & Grau
5/27/2025, hardcover
SKU: 9781954118904
A thrilling book about the abounding queerness of the natural world that challenges our expectations of what is normal, beautiful, and possible.
Growing up, Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian felt most at home in the swamps and culverts near her house in the Hudson Valley. A child who frequently felt out of place, too much of one thing or not enough of another, she found acceptance in these settings, among other amphibious beings. In snakes, snails, and, above all, fungi, she saw her own developing identities as a queer, neurodivergent person reflected back at her--and in them, too, she found a personal path to a life of science.
In Forest Euphoria, Kaishian shows us this making of a scientist and introduces readers to the queerness of all the life around us. Fungal species, we learn, commonly encompass more than two biological sexes--and some as many as twenty-three thousand. Some intersex slugs mutually fire calcium carbonate "love darts" at each other during courtship. Glass eels are sexually undetermined until their last year of life, a mystery that scientists once dubbed "the eel question." Nature, Kaishian shows us, is filled with the unusual, the overlooked, and the marginalized--and they have lessons for us all.
Wide-ranging, richly observant, and full of surprises, Forest Euphoria will open your eyes and change how you look at the world.
Reviews:
"Forest Euphoria pulses with vitality, in the wondrous beings we encounter and Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian's vivid storytelling. I'm in awe of her ability to interweave the little-known lives of slugs and fungi with memoir and social movements, so that every page broadens one's vision. Her expansive view of life provides an antidote to the loneliness of our species."--Robin Wall Kimmerer, New York Times bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants
"Just as nature resists easy categorization, so does this gem of a book. It is a heartfelt memoir. It is a lyrical feat of science writing. Perhaps above all else, it is a love letter to the messy, wondrous, complicated, binary-defying nature of the natural world--and, within it, us. I loved it."--Ed Yong, New York Times bestselling author of An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms around Us
"Nothing short of stunning . . . Kaishian achieves something truly singular. She establishes a kaleidoscopic vision of interconnectedness that encompasses intricate webs of communication and cooperation, while acknowledging that much always remains to be discovered. Not remotely dry, Forest Euphoria is an evocative work of profound creativity that combines scientific rigor, personal narrative, and a call for an outlook that is better, more inclusive, more true and genuinely scientific."--Shelf Awareness
"If the first lesson in how to love nature is learning to see yourself in it--and to see it in you--then Forest Euphoria is a master class in how to love the world. Whether our fellow inhabitants of this wild island planet are tiny or grand, plain or gorgeous, deceptively simple or mind-bogglingly complex, Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian is in love with them all. And her racing, bounding, arms-wide-open enthusiasm teaches us how to love them, too, in their full, astonishing diversity."--Margaret Renkl, New York Times bestselling author of The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year
"Forest Euphoria issues a joyous invitation to live with curiosity and love, and what could be a greater gift? I felt this invitation in the book's scientific rigor; in its attention to the sophisticated affinity of all life; in its exacting work to orient a reader to the symmetries, puzzlements, and delights of our world."--Megha Majumdar, New York Times bestselling author of A Burning
"Forest Euphoria is an enchanting paean to the queerness that abounds in nature, both human and nonhuman. Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian writes about the small, overlooked wonders of the world--eel foreheads, blue slug penises, and tiny mushrooms that grow only on the leg of one species of ant--with such reverence and lyricism that you may find yourself awakened to new kinds of beauty. Kaishian's universe of intimacy with the more-than-human world is radical. Let it open you up to new sensations, desires, and expectations of life itself. All of us organisms want the same thing, Kaishian argues: 'To be sensed for who they are, to be heard, to be known, to be seen.' An instant, exuberant classic."--Sabrina Imbler, author of How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures
About the Author:
Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian is the curator of mycology at the New York State Museum, as well as faculty with the Bard Prison Initiative. Kaishian earned her PhD from SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. She lives in the Hudson Valley.