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The Life and Death of a Minke Whale in the Amazon
As the Amazon burns, Fábio Zuker shares stories of resistance, self-determination, and kinship with the land.
In 2007, a seven-ton minke whale was found stranded on the banks of the Tapajós River, hundreds of miles into the Amazon rainforest. For days, environmentalists, journalists, and locals followed the lost whale, hoping to guide her back to the ocean, but ultimately proved unable to save her. Ten years later, journalist Fábio Zuker travels to the state of Pará, to the town known as "the place where the whale appeared," which developers are now eyeing for mining, timber, and soybean cultivation.
In these essays, Zuker shares intimate stories of life in the rainforest and its surrounding cities during an age of raging wildfires, mass migration, populist politics, and increasing deforestation. A group of Venezuelan migrants wait at a bus station in Manaus, looking for someplace more stable than home. In Alenquer, a father mourns the death of his son, poisoned by pesticides from a nearby açai plantation. An elder in Alter do Chão becomes the first Indigenous person in Brazil to die from COVID-19, after years of fighting for the rights and recognition of the Borari people.
The subjects Zuker interviews are often torn between ties with their ancestral territories and the push toward capitalist gains; The Life and Death of a Minke Whale in the Amazon captures the friction between their worlds and the resilience of movements for autonomy, self-definition, and respect for the land that nourishes us.
In 2007, a seven-ton minke whale was found stranded on the banks of the Tapajós River, hundreds of miles into the Amazon rainforest. For days, environmentalists, journalists, and locals followed the lost whale, hoping to guide her back to the ocean, but ultimately proved unable to save her. Ten years later, journalist Fábio Zuker travels to the state of Pará, to the town known as "the place where the whale appeared," which developers are now eyeing for mining, timber, and soybean cultivation.
In these essays, Zuker shares intimate stories of life in the rainforest and its surrounding cities during an age of raging wildfires, mass migration, populist politics, and increasing deforestation. A group of Venezuelan migrants wait at a bus station in Manaus, looking for someplace more stable than home. In Alenquer, a father mourns the death of his son, poisoned by pesticides from a nearby açai plantation. An elder in Alter do Chão becomes the first Indigenous person in Brazil to die from COVID-19, after years of fighting for the rights and recognition of the Borari people.
The subjects Zuker interviews are often torn between ties with their ancestral territories and the push toward capitalist gains; The Life and Death of a Minke Whale in the Amazon captures the friction between their worlds and the resilience of movements for autonomy, self-definition, and respect for the land that nourishes us.
240 pages, Paperback
First published June 7, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
July 31, 2022
In reports, columns, and even my own doctoral research in anthropology, there is one thing that has driven me more than any other during the past few years: the search for an appropriate way to relate the destruction of the Amazonian rainforest, and the destruction of it's myriad forms of life, from human to nonhuman, and beyond human.
This is my first translated work of 2022 AND it's a non-fiction! Woohooo! My typical rating system doesn't always translate to non-fiction, but this was an excellent work! It is a collection of essays detailing different ways that the Amazon is being destroyed, with a particular focus on the indigenous peoples and other inhabitants of the area.
This was rather difficult to read. I'm not super familiar with this area beyond a lot of what we see in the news. I knew that deforestation is a big problem, but this really makes it feel very personal. Zuker interviews many different people from all sides of different issues, and includes both big and small events, anecdotes, and changes in the region. I learned a lot about the region and the changes that are happening to make the lives of those native to the region a lot more difficult, uncertain, and even threatening to take them.
This was meandering at times and some of the essays I found more gripping than others, but overall I am very glad that I read this book. It accomplished my goal with non-fiction, which is to learn something new.
This is my first translated work of 2022 AND it's a non-fiction! Woohooo! My typical rating system doesn't always translate to non-fiction, but this was an excellent work! It is a collection of essays detailing different ways that the Amazon is being destroyed, with a particular focus on the indigenous peoples and other inhabitants of the area.
This was rather difficult to read. I'm not super familiar with this area beyond a lot of what we see in the news. I knew that deforestation is a big problem, but this really makes it feel very personal. Zuker interviews many different people from all sides of different issues, and includes both big and small events, anecdotes, and changes in the region. I learned a lot about the region and the changes that are happening to make the lives of those native to the region a lot more difficult, uncertain, and even threatening to take them.
This was meandering at times and some of the essays I found more gripping than others, but overall I am very glad that I read this book. It accomplished my goal with non-fiction, which is to learn something new.
March 11, 2023
A collection of essays/articles that explore issues that affect the Amazon - from deforestation and increased soybean agriculture/the use of pesticides; traditional Indigenous health practices and the clash with western biomedicine; climate change; homelessness and immigration; and much more. I don't know how much I took away from this on the whole, because I'm not well-educated on Brazilian politics, but this is illuminating nonetheless.
August 4, 2022
Lyrical, painful, engaging, critically important
March 7, 2023
Essa modalidade livro-documentário se tornou uma das minhas preferidas depois de ler esse livro. Incrível aprendizado sobre meu próprio país.
October 21, 2024
Fabio Zuker, I want to read and support all your work
June 30, 2022
Thankful for an English translation of this work. It is a difficult read in the sense that the plight of Indigenous communities in the Amazon are expressed clearly in Zuker's writing and Fitz's translation. You can feel the frustration, in many ways the sense of hopelessness that accompanies these interviews. This despair is being felt all around the world by different groups for different reasons, but this book shines a light groups often overlooked in the media (especially here in the US), and gives them a voice.
December 7, 2022
3 stars
I learned quite a bit from this book, particularly about the issues facing Indigenous Brazilians. My only complaint is that the essays were organized in a pretty haphazard manner, and there's a lot of overlap in the actual content of the essays as well. This made the book feel repetitive at times, even if the subject matter was interesting. Still, glad to have read about a country I didn't know a whole lot about previously.
I learned quite a bit from this book, particularly about the issues facing Indigenous Brazilians. My only complaint is that the essays were organized in a pretty haphazard manner, and there's a lot of overlap in the actual content of the essays as well. This made the book feel repetitive at times, even if the subject matter was interesting. Still, glad to have read about a country I didn't know a whole lot about previously.
August 24, 2022
A painful read…
November 26, 2023
“No obstante, muitos políticos, empresários e parte do poder judicial insistem em afirmar que na região não existem mais índios, como se a identidade cultural e os modos de vida fossem possíveis de serem apagados pela violência colonial, como se não encontrassem formas de se reinventar como potência crítica aos processos que lhes são impostos.”
“Aparecida faz uma análise da maneira como a fotografia foi apropriada pelos Wari, ‘não em seu aspecto de fixidez, de espelho do mundo, mas de transformação, de projeção de corpos em outro mundo’.
Uma reportagem investigativa essencial escrita de forma narrativa. Sobre os imigrantes venezuelanos no Brasil, povos indígenas despossuídos das suas terras e morando de baixo de uma ponte, a violência lenta do agronegócios de açaí e das madeireiras na Amazônia, os projetos de “desenvolvimento” de financierizar a floresta pelo projeto de crédito de carbono em que a Finlândia compraria a floresta e colocaria os indígenas em posição de desmatadores para os ricos manterem seus modos de vida, a era extrativista e monocultura da borracha e agora da soja, as queimadas e a pecuária de bovina, e destruição do ecossistema dos rios e dos lagos, secos pelo uso de bombas para retirar a água para o uso na irrigação de monocultura e pelo veneno lá jogado sem impunidade, os assassinatos dos moradores, trabalhadores, e os que resistem o uso de agrotóxicos, a saúde indígena nas instituições de saúde ocidental. Uma leitura muito recomendada. 4.5 ⭐️
“Aparecida faz uma análise da maneira como a fotografia foi apropriada pelos Wari, ‘não em seu aspecto de fixidez, de espelho do mundo, mas de transformação, de projeção de corpos em outro mundo’.
Uma reportagem investigativa essencial escrita de forma narrativa. Sobre os imigrantes venezuelanos no Brasil, povos indígenas despossuídos das suas terras e morando de baixo de uma ponte, a violência lenta do agronegócios de açaí e das madeireiras na Amazônia, os projetos de “desenvolvimento” de financierizar a floresta pelo projeto de crédito de carbono em que a Finlândia compraria a floresta e colocaria os indígenas em posição de desmatadores para os ricos manterem seus modos de vida, a era extrativista e monocultura da borracha e agora da soja, as queimadas e a pecuária de bovina, e destruição do ecossistema dos rios e dos lagos, secos pelo uso de bombas para retirar a água para o uso na irrigação de monocultura e pelo veneno lá jogado sem impunidade, os assassinatos dos moradores, trabalhadores, e os que resistem o uso de agrotóxicos, a saúde indígena nas instituições de saúde ocidental. Uma leitura muito recomendada. 4.5 ⭐️
June 6, 2023
Well written and extremely educational. Zucker does a great job of balancing factual reports with anecdotes and displays an extensive and personal knowledge of the issues being faced by communities in the Amazon, both human and non human.
I will admit that I skimmed a couple of the essays near the end of the book. The themes had begun to feel familiar/repetitive enough that I decided I had read what I needed to in order to gleen the most important messages he presented. If I spoke Portuguese I would have loved to have read this in it’s original language.
I will admit that I skimmed a couple of the essays near the end of the book. The themes had begun to feel familiar/repetitive enough that I decided I had read what I needed to in order to gleen the most important messages he presented. If I spoke Portuguese I would have loved to have read this in it’s original language.
July 11, 2025
Hearing about those impacted most by climate change was educational and enlightening. My heart breaks by the attempts at erasure of indigenous ways of life, yet awed by their resilience and persistent fight for a way of relating to the land that is caring and interconnected. Also really interesting to learn about Venezuelan migrants and their relation to this conflict.
dnf
October 18, 2022Temporary DNF, the ebook (at least the one I have) doesn't have text scaling so I can't read it! Will pick back up once I can get a physical copy, if the text is large enough.
April 26, 2023
This is a gentle book, describing the situations of immigrants and residents in the Brazilian part of the Amazon. Excellent to help the reader understand what's happening there.
August 17, 2024
I normally don’t read a lot of nonfiction so I didn’t think I’d enjoy this too much. But this was really brilliant and I found myself incredibly engaged by the text.
June 10, 2024
I read this as part of a scholarship program with my college that required me to read this book then write an essay for a chance to win scholarship money. If it wasn’t for that, I likely wouldn’t have ever heard of it, much less chosen to read it.
I didn’t know what to expect, but I learned a LOT of alarming things about the Amazon throughout this book. I liked that there was a storytelling aspect as the author is recounting his trips to the Amazon along with his conversations with locals. As I continued reading, my heart ached for those who have been affected negatively by industrial farming and the climate changes it has caused. I wish I had solutions and the power to change things, but unfortunately I don’t. Instead, I recommend that you read this book, gain an understanding of what’s happening and help spread awareness!
I didn’t know what to expect, but I learned a LOT of alarming things about the Amazon throughout this book. I liked that there was a storytelling aspect as the author is recounting his trips to the Amazon along with his conversations with locals. As I continued reading, my heart ached for those who have been affected negatively by industrial farming and the climate changes it has caused. I wish I had solutions and the power to change things, but unfortunately I don’t. Instead, I recommend that you read this book, gain an understanding of what’s happening and help spread awareness!
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews