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, Memoir, Nature, India

416 pages, Hardcover

Published November 4, 2025

Reviews

[Corvus · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's always tough to review a memoir as it can come off like reviewing someones life rather than the book itself. Sangamithra Iyer's Governing Bodies took me a little while to get into. A mishmash of tumultuous things in my personal life and a unique writing structure meant that the book took me a bit longer to read than I expected. This is not a bad thing however. It is plain to see why Iyer was a recipient of a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant. Once I settled in, the book took me on journeys all over time and place. This is the type of memoir and collection of writing that can be read multiple times, discovering something new with each experience.

The physical design and structure of the book is lovely. The table of contents is combined with and woven along a map of a river with points for various animals and events. There are beautiful quotes throughout the book, little silhouettes of different species marking breaks in text, and other design touches that make the physical copy worth the read.

The text is written in the present tense which is unusual but not unheard of for this type of book. Large amounts of the text, especially in the beginning sections, also function as letters to and mini biographies of her father and grandfather. There was also a lot of what seemed like uncritical admiration for and inclusion of Gandhi's life story. She does go on to discuss the ways he let her down and the importance of not worshiping people we admire as infallible. Part of why I struggled with these writing choices is more based on personal taste and interest. I wanted to know more about her life than theirs. The text also jumps around quite a lot. Iyer will jump from topic to topic, sometimes spending a few sentences on an important event while others spanned multiple sections. At times, this made the book a little tough for me to settle into. I found myself thinking, "wait, tell me more!" when the author would hop back into speaking to her family and telling their stories. This sort of thing becomes less present the more the book progresses. Again, a lot of this is personal taste rather than skill. I'm never one to be interested in IVF which was a good chunk of her shared experience. However, most of the other sections that got a lot of space were fascinating.

The author is a child of immigrants who was vegetarian and then vegan. Her strong commitment to the liberation of other species from such a young age is admirable. She discussed how this affected her education including when she would object to curriculum involving harming animals. She discussed weighing the practicality of a civil engineering education against following her passion to work with other species and in environmental protection. She details her time working with rescued chimpanzees, writing for Satya magazine, traveling and navigating the prejudice in sciences and other fields as a brown woman, passion for the experiences of the the greater than human world as well as that of humans, and the connections of all of these things as they commingle across the planet.

Something that really shines in the memoir and storytelling aspects of this book is how Iyer immerses the reader in the atmosphere of each story. I don't know if I've ever read a text where someone so carefully observed and included other species she observed throughout her travels. I'm not just talking about sanctuary animals she encountered, but those she may see for a second on the side of the road and others that her struggles with illness and oppression made her feel intimately related to.

She also discussed Indian culture and nonviolence, including the myth that India is a monolith of belief system and respect for cows. The level of harm and exploitation towards these animals is extensive even in areas where they are part of worship- as is the case with most of the world. Much of Iyer's veganism is informed by intimate experiences with highly diverse cultures in India and elsewhere. Iyer also devotes a section to her experience shadowing several egg barons on their profit driven journey to shift from battery cage operations to "cage free." The conflicts between these men's beliefs and practices in their personal lives and their professional conduct were extensive and morbidly fascinating. How does one who practices Jainism in most aspects of their life then execute a profession involving horrific egg farming? How are men so focused on hospitality yet so detached from the experiences of hens on these farms? Just reading this experience took me on an emotional roller-coaster, so I can only imagine what living it was like. I'm grateful for the way she told this story. It is one of many examples of the heavily conflicting nature of horrific industries and human behavior. This leads to my next point.

As I've mentioned in other reviews, I have a boundary with media that details animal suffering. I no longer put myself through a lot of it- I've been vegan 20 years and have seen enough happen to animals in farms, labs, and other industries to traumatize me for eternity. The way Iyer navigated these topics in this book was very intentional and skillful. Reading her tellings does not require the reader to go through the immense trauma of witnessing the unfathomable level of violence towards other animals in extensive detail, but she also does not shy away from this reality. It's difficult to describe how she did this, but I'm grateful for it. I hope that reading a text like this will ease folks into different ways of seeing and thinking without causing them to shut down. The book also can serve as a companion to those of us already exercising similar ethical practices as they are woven throughout the text and author's life seamlessly. When VINE book club met after reading this book, one member referred to this as "continuing trauma without invoking it" which is an apt description of something that is no easy feat.

Iyer captures what it is like to move consistently throughout the world as someone aware of what is happening to animals around her regardless of species. This is both an exhausting and rewarding way to live. She discusses how her veganism is both personal and a wider response to state authoritarianism and violence. She links her experiences with chronic illness and reproductive healthcare to the exploitation of other animals and their bodies. She highlights the care work going into helping others grow old and eventually die. Her stories about her dog brought me to tears having lost several companions myself in close succession due to age and illness. There is so much beauty throughout her story and the book as well. Chimps given the chance to thrive, humans willing to change their minds and practices, ecosystems recovering with the right focus, and so forth. This book is truly a journey. I'm sure there are many things I would find anew if I started it all over again.

Overall, the book is an experimental and creative collection of memoir, essay, and storytelling that takes the reader on journeys throughout the world. It shows the reader the lives of both the author and others she encountered. I'd be interested to read another book later in her life that tells us the stories of what will come next.

This was also posted to my storygraph and blog.

[Theresa]

Exquisite writing. Favorite theme of book: Iyer finding her way, her passions, how she wants to live her life in comparison to her father and grandfather's lives.

[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.

[Corrie Haffly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Governing Bodies by Sangamithra Iyer is a memoir by a civil engineer, animal rights activist, environmental planner, and writer. Intriguingly and beautifully written, Iyer addresses her grandfather, father, and finally, the reader, as if writing a series of long, meandering letters. She ties her own development as an engineer, as a vegan, and as an activist with the stories and facts she discovers about her family’s past, from her grandfather’s career as a civil engineer in the British empire that he gave up to live a simpler life in a Gandhi-inspired commune, to her father’s immigration to America with 75 cents in his pocket. Iyer also describes her own experiences that form her deep desire for a nonviolent existence in this world of factory farming and industrial complexes. Her memoir winds its way through grief, animal cognition, facts about soil and water, infertility, racism, and veganism in a way that carries you along through the ebbs and flows of life, loss, and discovery.

[Annie]

Learned about this book after meeting Sangamithra’s team at work and hearing about some very cool water projects happening at the DEP. I’ve never read a memoir so loyally structured around a core set of themes before. fave topics were engineering as an art/poetic form, paradoxes of factory farming, and how to deepen identity through tracing physical footsteps.

the sheer amount of precise scientific information coming at you alongside the narrative really sets this apart from other memoirs for me; you’re really learning these factual tidbits as the author is learning them but also reading how it felt to be there, staring right at the thing

v different from the last memoir i read which was Ina Garten’s where it was a struggle to connect to or take things away from the writing despite there being some obviously interesting experiences in the text

[Betty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can’t recommend this memoir highly enough. It’s beautifully written, unfolding with a natural rhythm that mirrors the ebb and flow of life after the loss of the author’s father. Sangamithra reflects with care and insight on the injustices in our world, especially in how we treat the environment and the animals who share it with us. She suggests that much of our ecological crisis arises from a violent, disconnected relationship with nature. When we place ourselves above it, exploitation becomes easy; when we recognize ourselves as part of it, we’re far more likely to respond with compassion and respect.

[Sonja Swift · Rating 5 out of 5]

This confluence of waters, beings and stories is a profoundly thoughtful and even reverent book, beautiful and bravely written.

[Sarita · Rating 1 out of 5]

Cute nice concept but I’m a bitch abt prose but shoutout moth 😂🤹🏽

[Kristina · Rating 5 out of 5]

LOVED it. Uniquely written and beautifully elegetic and reflective. A meditation on love, loss, heritage, generational inheritance, the environmental landscape, and animal rights.