Governing Bodies: A Memoir, a Confluence, a Watershed

by Sangamithra Iyer

A beautifully rendered debut memoir of family, legacy, conservation, the natural world—and those who inhabit it.

As a civil engineer, Sangamithra Iyer knows about resilience from studying soils and water. As an animal rights activist, she advocates for a revolution in how we value and relate to other species. And as the child of immigrants from India, she searches for submerged histories.

Animated by a series of questions—How do we disentangle ourselves from systems of harm? Is it possible to grasp the scale of planetary sorrow and emerge with truth and love as our guides, rather than despair? What is the relationship between individual action and systemic change?—this memoir takes the form of three meandering rivers, each written as a letter. Addressing the first of them to her grandfather, Iyer assembles the story of a man who embraced Gandhi’s philosophy and went to work developing wells in Tamil Nadu. In a second letter, addressed to her father, she explores their shared interest in cultivating compassion for all beings. And then in a final letter, addressed to readers, she braids these explorations of her familial past with her own experiences as a woman of color and citizen of the world, always seeking ways to move beyond resignation and restore flow.

A lyrical story of lineages and an urgently needed reckoning with the ways bodies are both controlled and liberated, Governing Bodies is a timeless work with profoundly timely relevance.

Genres: Nonfiction, Nature, Memoir

416 pages, Hardcover

Published November 4, 2025

Reviews

[Jerry Edward Stephens · Rating 5 out of 5]

How does one read and understand a personal memoir? These memoirs can often be difficult to read and appreciate. The writing is certainly about the individual’s life and experiences. The writing itself must, however, stand out in some significant way. This new memoir does so by first focusing on water. Sangamithra Iyer recounts many truly interesting events in her life; that of her father in the former Burma and in India; and the influence of her family members and ancestors who are all crucial to her being. But water remains central to her story. The author first identifies the Irawaddy River in Burma as particularly important to her personal development. Water, other natural world features, and a focus on the rights of animals are all explained in the context of the author’s career as an accomplished professional civil engineer concerned with water issues and water supply infrastructure. Then she has also studied creative writing. Iyer is the author of such nonfiction as The Lines We Draw (Hen Press, 2014), an editor of Satya, a magazine devoted to advocacy for animals and animal rights, and a finalist for the 2016 Siskiyou Prize in New Environmental Literature. She explains that this book is an explanation of the ways the various bodies —human, animal, water— are crucial to her own personal growth. And, finally, her book began as an essay in 2019 in The Kenyon Review where she then described her project as part of a larger book project she was working on. The memoir is highly recommend to readers concerned about issues of environmental justice and to those who admire truly creative writing. This is an excellent example of both.

[Suzanne Pender · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a poignant, tender memoir by an inspiring woman and activist who charts her life’s journey — it’s loves, it’s realizations, it’s losses — from the personal to that of other animals on this planet. I was especially taken by her description of Washoe, a chimpanzee who learned American Sign Language, and signed CRY and PLEASE PERSON HUG, to the author, who shared with her that she lost her baby; indeed Washoe lost her own baby and was able to use language to express empathy. Another, was when the author spoke about the extractive dairy industry, and visited a sanctuary in India. She discusses the contradictions there, with many wrongly thinking that India holds its cows as sacred and therefore treats them well. Even in the sanctuary, some mother cows were enslaved to produce dairy — impregnated over and over again to produce milk, so the “nonprofit” could make money. She describes sick mothers and babies, close to death, that the “sanctuary” will not euthanize because it is “forbidden”, though that would be the most humane end to their suffering. All of these personal stories told in her poetic prose were deeply moving. I hope this book attracts the wide readership it deserves.