Mother Creature Kin

<p><b>Luminous nonfiction about the natural world from essayist Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder who asks: what can other-than-human creatures teach us about mothering belonging caregiving loss and resiliency?</b></p><p><b> </b></p><p>What does it mean to be a mother in an era of climate catastrophe? And what can we learn from the plants and creatures who mother at the edges of their world's unraveling?</p><p>Becoming a mother in this time means bringing life into a world that appears to be coming undone. Drawing upon ecology mythology and her own experiences as a new mother Steinauer-Scudder confronts what it means to mother: to do the good work of being in service to the living world. What if we could all mother the places we live and the beings with whom we share those places? And what if they also mother <i>us</i>?</p><p>In prose that teems with longing lyricism and knowledge of ecology Steinauer-Scudder writes of the silent flight and aural maps of barn owls of nursing whales of real and imagined forests of tidal marshes of ancient single-celled organisms and of newly planted gardens. The creatures inhabiting these stories teach us about centering belonging entanglement edgework homemaking and how to imagine the future. Rooted in wonder while never shying away from loss <i>Mother Creature Kin</i> reaches toward a language of inclusive care learned from creatures living at the brink.</p><p>Writing in the tradition of Camille Dungy Elizabeth Rush and Margaret Renkl Steinauer-Scudder invites us into the daily obligatory sacred work of care. Despair and fear will not save the world any more than they will raise our children and while we don't know what the future holds we know it will need mothers. As the very ground shifts beneath our feet what if we apprenticed ourselves to the creaturely mothers with whom we share this beloved home?</p>