Banzeiro Òkòtó is at once a work of reportage, a manifesto for social and agrarian transformation, and no less than a blueprint for a new cosmography. . . . Brum may be suspicious of the ‘dogma of hope,’ then, but she never lapses into cynicism or despair. She offers instead community, solidarity, resourcefulness and a bracing defiance.”—William Atkins, The New York Times Book Review
“A chronicle as transporting and harrowing as a mighty river. . . . [Brum is] an astute writer of conscience as lyrically intimate, passionate, and precise as Terry Tempest Williams. . . . [Her] fiercely illuminating testimony asserts in fresh and vital ways that the Amazon, the ‘center of the world,’ is essential to life on Earth.”—Booklist
“Brum adopts an unconventional form to her work as a way of shedding the uncomfortable colonial connotations of her own Whiteness. . . . [A] formidable chronicle of the increasingly deforested world of the Amazon.”—Kirkus Reviews
“[Brum's book] is an attempt . . . to get up close with those who have merged with the rainforest in a way that she seeks to emulate, and then to try to convey to outsiders what she has heard and felt and learned—with all its sweat and noise and discomfort. . . .She points out what should be obvious: that those best equipped to care for and report on the Amazon are those who are native to it and know it best.” —Rachel Nolan, The New York Review of Books
“Devastating, extraordinary, and unforgettable.”—Rebecca Servadio, Words Without Borders
“Brum is a powerful, poetic voice for those environmental activists struggling to resist, before it is too late, the further degradation of her life-affirming Amazon.”—Foreign Affairs
“Brum moves from a personal scale to a historic one and back again; the result is a work of environmental reportage like little else out there.”—Tobias Carroll, Words Without Borders
“Banzeiro Òkòtó is the ultimate guidebook to the Amazon. Not a travel guide, but one that takes you much deeper, right into the forest’s deep soul. The wonder of it, the oneness of the indigenous people with the land, the horror of the genocide they’re still resisting, the corruption and the terrible violence—always inextricably linked—perpetrated by the grileiros and their political allies as they seek to convert one of the world’s greatest treasures into cash. More than anything, Banzeiro Òkòtó is about the battle to save the Amazon from destruction, and this is a battle we all need to care about—the fate of humanity, amongst other species, utterly depends on it.”—Patrick Alley, co-founder of Global Witness
“In this heartbreaking book, Eliane Brum reports on the irreplaceable realm we are losing in the Amazon—not just the imperiled fauna and flora, but also the people who steadfastly remain, showing us how we can champion their survival and our own. A book of paramount significance.”—Idra Novey, author of Take What You Need
“Eliane Brum’s searing, complacency-shattering testimonial on behalf of the Amazon echoes the brutally violent experience of Indigenous people around the world, and their ongoing resistance to climate apartheid imposed by predatory capitalism. In passionate, transformative language, Brum exhorts us to move beyond the myth of sustainability and embrace the radical, hegemony-busting truth of this Indigenous teaching: we are the earth.”—Diane Wilson, author of The Seed Keeper
“In Banzeiro Òkòtó, Eliane Brum casts our survival as a species as being on the line with what happens in the Amazon, its forests, lands, rivers, and people. She does so with fierce intensity, putting her whole being into the heat and heart of it. She takes apart the forces of whiteness (including her own), the economic and political structures that colonize, exploit, extract, and enslave. Those same forces threaten and kill those acting against them, and those speaking and writing truth to power—which is exactly what Brum has been doing, and what she does now with this brave, beautiful, and necessary new book.”—Rick Simonson, Elliott Bay Book Company
“A book that distills a lifetime of listening, wild with empathy, and refines it in the fire of unimpeachable political acuity. Written with diamond intelligence, Brum gives the reader the reforested human: impassionate, courageous, and complete.”—Jay Griffiths, author of Wild: An Elemental Journey
“Many books have been written about the Amazon, but this is gut-wrenchingly, mind-expandingly of the Amazon, its joy and tragedy, its violence and beauty. Read it and understand.”—Fred Pearce
“In this passionate and eloquent dispatch from the Amazon, Eliane Brum creates her own devastating poetry and politics of deforestation.”—Chloe Aridjis, author of Sea Monsters
2022-12-13
A Brazilian reporter offers a “destructured” portrait of the Amazon’s collapse in terms of biosphere and Indigenous culture.
In her second book, following The Collector of Leftover Souls: Field Notes on Brazil’s Everyday Insurrections, Brum adopts an unconventional form to her work as a way of shedding the uncomfortable colonial connotations of her own Whiteness. The author, who lives in Altamira, in the Amazon jungle, writes with enormous empathy about the Indigenous people who, over the centuries, have learned to regard the rapacious Whites as “enemies” who have largely destroyed the Amazon rainforest. Brum describes her work with other researchers in Altamira, where she has studied historical ecology, “the field of study that explores how humans have interacted with the environment across space and time….Part of the Amazon is a cultural forest, meaning it has been sculpted over the course of thousands of years, mainly by humans, but also by nonhumans, the ones we call ‘animals,’ through their interactions with the environment.” As the author shows, most of the Indigenous people of the rainforest have been decimated by disease and violence. Brum is keenly aware of the disconnect between the White rhetoric about “ecology” and the Indigenous practice of being one with the forest, and she writes fervently about the massive deforestation that has been ongoing for decades. The author excoriates the right-wing administration of Jair Bolsonaro, elected in 2018, as having brought the country to a “climate emergency.” While connecting “with the forest and the women of the forest,” she writes, “deforestation, the destruction of nature, the contamination of rivers with mercury and pesticides—this became a lived experience of violence within my own body as well.” A relentless critic, she asserts that “exploitation by white people in the name of ‘progress’ is a political operation meant to erase everything that existed before.”
A bleak, formidable chronicle of the increasingly deforested world of the Amazon.
