The Sweet Breathing of Plants: Women Writing on the Green World

A bumper crop of the best writing by women on women and plants

Since prehistory, plants–as sources of food, medicine, clothing, beauty, and 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 and poetry.

As in Intimate Nature , their previous anthology on women and animals (edited with Deena Metzger), Linda Hogan and Brenda Peterson illuminate their subject from a range of perspectives. Here are curranderas and craftswomen whose legacy of plant wisdom safeguards our connection to the green world; botanists and geneticists; and visionaries like Rachel Carson, who show us the world–and our power to protect or destroy it–in a blade of grass. Here are Zora Neale Hurston on voodoo herbs, Sharman Apt Russell on the perfume of plants, Annick Smith on huckleberries, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas on the Everglades’ “river of grass,” Isabel Allende on the language of flowers, Susan Orleans on “Orchid Fever,” Diane Ackerman on the rain forest, and Kathleen Norris on “Dreaming of Trees.” Here is an eloquent “ode to mold,” a paean to mulch, an elegy for elders. Here is a book that celebrates an ancient and ongoing relationship in a new and appealing way.