Intimate Nature: The Bond Between Women and Animals

by Linda Hogan, Brenda Peterson, Deena Metzger

“This remarkable group of women have narrated their personal experiences with animals—what they have learned and how it has transformed their lives.”— Common Boundary
 
“A celebration of compassion . . . Women are opening new ways of communicating with and understanding the animal world.”— The Seattle Times
 
Though women have long felt kinship with animals, in the past they seldom participated in the study of them. Now, as more women make animals the subject of their investigations, significant new ideas are emerging—based on the premise that animals are honored co-sharers of the earth. 
 
This unprecedented anthology features original stories, essays, meditations, and poems by a vast array of women nature writers and field scientists,
 
Diane Ackerman • Virginia Coyle • Gretel Ehrlich • Dian Fossey • Tess Gallagher • Jane Goodall • Temple Grandin • Susan Griffin • Joy Harjo • Barbara Kingsolver • Ursula le Guin • Denise Levertov • Linda McCarriston • Susan Chernak McElroy • Rigoberta Menchú • Cynthia Moss • Katherine Payne • Marge Piercy • Pattiann Rogers • Linda Tellington-Jones • Haunani-Kay Trask • Gillian Van Houten • Terry Tempest Williams

Genres: Nature, Nonfiction, Essays, Poetry, Animals, Feminism, Anthologies

455 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Linda K. Hogan (born 1947 Denver) is a Native American poet, storyteller, academic, playwright, novelist, environmentalist and writer of short stories. She is currently the Chickasaw Nation's Writer in Residence.

Linda Hogan is Chickasaw. Her father is a Chickasaw from a recognized historical family and Linda's uncle, Wesley Henderson, helped form the White Buffalo Council in Denver during the 1950s. It was to help other Indian people coming to the city because of The Relocation Act, which encouraged migration for work and other opportunities. He had a strong influence on her and she grew up relating strongly to both her Chickasaw family in Indian Territory (Oklahoma) and to a mixed Indian community in the Denver area. At other times, her family traveled because of the military.

Her first university teaching position was in American Indian Studies and American Studies at the University of Minnesota. After writing her first book, Calling Myself Home, she continued to write poetry. Her work has both a historical and political focus, but is lyrical. Her most recent books are The Book of Medicines (1993) and Rounding the Human Corners. (2008) She is also a novelist and essayist. Her work centers on the world of Native peoples, from both her own indigenous perspective and that of others. She was a full professor of Creative Writing at the University of Colorado and then taught the last two years in the University's Ethnic Studies Department. She currently is the Writer in Residence for her own Chickasaw Nation.

Essayist, novelist, and poet, Hogan has published works in many different backgrounds and forms. Her concentration is on environmental themes. She has acted as a consultant in bringing together Native tribal representatives and feminist themes, particularly allying them to her Native ancestry. Her work, whether fiction or non-fiction, expresses an indigenous understanding of the world.

She has written essays and poems on a variety of subjects, both fictional and nonfictional, biographical and from research. Hogan has also written historical novels. Her work studies the historical wrongs done to Native Americans and the American environment since the European colonization of North America.

Hogan was a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Oklahoma. She is the (inaugural) Writer-in-Residence for the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma. In October 2011, she instructed a writing workshop through the Abiquiu Workshops in Abiquiu, New Mexico.

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Jenny Schow · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a favorite to take camping with me. Every experience written by very different women with very different experiences and yet all of them connect and resonate so deeply with me both as an animal and nature lover.

[Dawn Livingston · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book of essays from women of different cultures. They're grouped under headings; First People, Deep Science: Living In The Field, Borderlines: The Domesticated Wild, Relationships: Learning From Animals, Come Into Animal Presence: Testimonies, Restoration: Bringing Back The Animals. I picked stories under those headings that interested me and some others at random, I did not read the entire book. No patience. There are dozens of stories and a few poems. They did such a good job of gathering material for the book that there were so many stories, I felt overwhelmed. However, it's a fascinating variety of views about animals and their place in the world and in our lives. Some animals are just in the way to natural resources, or a new subdivision. Some domestic animals are just seen as inanimate objects that are to be used without considering that they have feelings, they feel pain. Others for centuries, like dogs, have been seen as useful to guard and herd sheep, to help with crowd control, for transportation across distances like a ranch. But only recently have we begun to really get a better idea of how amazing the dog, for example, really is. They're so helpful some can even detect cancer, know when a person has low sugar, etc. They're learning more about the dog's senses and how wonderful and helpful they can truly be. :) You can tell I'm a dog person. But the point is we know so little about the animals in our world and how they fit into the ecosystem, how important they are, what they can teach us. This book helps you to have a better understanding of this.

I recommend this book to anyone, male or female, who likes animals in general because the animals mentioned in the book are a large range from monk seals to coyotes to giraffes. In fact, I recommend this book to everyone. It may change how you perceive animals and don't be put off by the first section which is a little weird, Native American, and mystic.

[Octavia Cade · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was excellent. It's an edited collection of writing themed around women's relationship with nature, and its strength is in its variety. Most of the pieces included here are essays, but there's a handful of poems and the odd short story, come from scientists and poets and everything in between. Really, glancing down the table of contents is enough to lure anyone in - Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, Ursula Le Guin, Temple Grandin, Leslie Silko, Barbara Kingsolver, Diane Ackerman, Denise Levertov, and more. And what's most striking about all the pieces together is how personal they are. This is especially true of the naturalists, who (almost to a woman) seem to have disdained the typical scientific approach of rigid objectivity and lack of emotion. Indeed, as several of them point out, they've been able to succeed so well at what they do precisely because they aren't as wedded to the narrative of nature-as-something-to-be-controlled as some of their male colleagues are. Again and again the theme of interconnection comes up, the idea of human as part of the natural world and not the head of it, and a focus, too, on interconnection between species, and the ability to communicate with them.

This is one of those books you could have on a shelf and pick up every so often, flip to a random page, and read. A lot of what's been included here are excerpts from other works, and I really want to go look a lot of them up, because the writing is generally so approachable, and so polished, that it would be a pleasure to read more of it.

[Satoita · Rating 5 out of 5]

Through this book, the authors have made me feel: validated, awestruck, sorrow, anger, love, connected. I've learned a lot, and this book correlates to my own path of discovery, the path that all humans are taking right now: the rediscovery of our connection to the planet, the super organism we call Mother.

[Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

With the exception of one story, this was pretty good. I think that animals are more in tune with people than most realize but I also think that it depends on the person involved, not that it need be a woman. Frequently intuitiveness comes into play in communication. There is a bond, animals will choose you more often that you will choose the animal, my thoughts.

The story that I found ridiculous involved a woman being beaten via head butting by a ram. She spent her available time trying to figure out what the lesson was in this beating which broke an arm among other maladies. My thought, get the hell out of the way... dummy.

[Lisa Pool · Rating 5 out of 5]

I gave this book 5 stars because I found the stories and poems to be breathtaking. Any stories that didn't interest me were passed over but the one's I did read (which were most of them) brought up so many emotions. I always suspected that women have a closer bond to animals and this book confirms it. If we were the guardians of nature the earth would look very different right now.

[Stephanie Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

I could relate to what all of the stories the women in this book spoke of as I've also had my own personally deep relationships with non-humans during the course of my life. The animals know far more than we pretend they do. Somewhere in our collective imprinted memories we know the truth, yet choose to disregard it. We allow ourselves to accept the patriarchal erroneous denial of a truth that will only serve to facilitate and contribute to our progressive removal from the natural world.

[Carmine · Rating 3 out of 5]

A wide variety of essays from women of differing spiritual and cultural perspectives. Many of the writings offered striking or moving insights into women's unique connections with the animal world, a subject close to my heart. I think perhaps this volume would have benefited from less inclusiveness; much of the writing was powerful, but a number of writings felt unfocused, unpolished, or otherwise fell short of that standard. Trimming a couple hundred pages would have made the book stronger as a whole and created more of a cover-to-cover read than a skimming experience.

[Susan]

I bought this book years ago, but recently started reading it to aid my completion of medicine bag kits for friends and family to make over the holidays this year. One of the last stories in the book, which is about a fur-trapper's daughter coming to terms with her father's hunting of the local coyote population, is worth the price of purchase on its own.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many of these essays were interesting and I liked a lot of the poetry, but I was disappointed there wasn't more fiction—although some of the essays read like fiction.