Bøger af Aimee Nezhukumatathil

An award-winning poet's nonfiction debut - essays about the natural world, and the way its inhabitants can teach, support and inspire us.

"A lyrical book of short essays about food, offering a banquet of tastes, smells, memories, associations, and marvelous curiosities from nature."--

“Hands-down one of the most beautiful books of the year.” —NPRA New York Times BestsellerBarnes & Noble Book of the YearBeloved author Aimee Nezhukumatathil's celebrated work of nonfiction, now including additional essays and illustrations. As a child, Nezhukumatathil called many places home: the grounds of a Kansas mental institution, where her Filipina mother was a doctor; the open skies and tall mountains of Arizona, where she hiked with her Indian father; and the chillier climes of western New York and Ohio. But no matter where she was transplanted—no matter how awkward the fit or forbidding the landscape—she was able to turn to our world’s fierce and funny creatures for guidance.“What the peacock can do,” she tells us, “is remind you of a home you will run away from and run back to all your life.” The axolotl teaches us to smile, even in the face of unkindness; the touch-me-not plant shows us how to shake off unwanted advances; the narwhal demonstrates how to survive in hostile environments. Even in the strange and the unlovely, Nezhukumatathil finds beauty and kinship. For it is this way with wonder: it requires that we are curious enough to look past the distractions in order to fully appreciate the world’s gifts.Warm, lyrical, and gorgeously illustrated by Fumi Nakamura, World of Wonders is a book of sustenance and joy.

"[World of Wonders] walks. It sprints. It leaps. Most importantly, the book lingers in a world where power, people, and the literal outside wrestle painfully, beautifully." -KIESE LAYMON

The astonishing second book by a lively and inventive American poet of Filipina-Indian descent. Naomi Shihab Nye says of this book, "Aimee Nezhukumatathil's poems are . . . ripe, funny and fresh. They're the fullness of days, deliciously woven of heart and verve, rich with sources and elements-animals, insects, sugar, cardamom, legends, countries, relatives, soaps, fruits-taste and touch. I love the nubby layerings of lines, luscious textures and constructions. . . . She knows that many worlds may live in one house. . . ."

From Publishers Weekly:Nezhukumatathil's fourth book is fascinated with the small mechanisms of being, whether natural, personal, or imagined. Everything from eating eels in the Ozark mountains to the history of red dye finds a rich life in her poems. At times her lush settings and small stories are reminiscent of fairy tales ("The frog who wanted to see the sea was mostly disappointed"), while at others Nezhukumatathil speaks with resonance and fierceness: "The center of my hands boiled/ with blossoms when we made a family. I would never flee that garden. I swear to/ you here and now: If I ever go missing, know that I am trying to come home." Even as the poems jump from the Philippines to India to New York, they still take their time, stopping to notice that "there is no mystery on water/ greater than the absence of rust," and to draw small but wonderful parallels: "I loved you dark & late. The crocus have found ways to push up & say this/ too."