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Summary
Summary
In this uplifting memoir, a professor and activist shares what birds can teach us about life, social change, and protecting the environment.
Trish O'Kane never expected to be a birder. It was a lone red cardinal and a bumptious cast of house sparrows that changed everything for O'Kane after Hurricane Katrina shattered her life in New Orleans. Watching birds thrive throughout the devastated city became her salvation and set her on a new path. Soon O'Kane found herself pursuing an environmental science PhD in Wisconsin, where she became a full-on bird obsessive--logging hours and hours in a stunningly diverse urban park, filling field notebooks with observations of bird doings and dramas, and volunteering in a wildlife rehabilitation center bird nursery.
But it wasn't until that park, her bird-watching haven, was threatened with development that O'Kane became an environmental activist. Taking her cues from the birds, she mustered a mighty flock of fellow human park lovers to raise their voices and save the park.
Each chapter in Birding to Change the World features at least one species of bird that O'Kane has learned from. She recounts the astonishing science of bird life, including migration and survival strategies, along with many moving and compelling stories about birds and the humans who love them. In this heartfelt memoir, O'Kane shows what birds can teach us--and how that education can be a transformative force for social change.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this affecting memoir, O'Kane (Guatemala in Focus), a natural sciences lecturer at the University of Vermont, elegantly weaves personal and natural history as she details how her fascination with birds compelled her to quit her journalism career, return to school at age 45 to get a PhD in environmental studies, and become an ardent conservationist. Interspersed with O'Kane's account of deciding to go back to school after observing the resilience of New Orleans sparrows in the wake of Hurricane Katrina are riveting details about how the birds likely followed humans out of Africa and were alternately treated with admiration (the first sparrows were brought to the U.S. in 1850 because "European immigrants simply missed" them) and contempt (extermination campaigns from the 1700s through the 1930s collectively killed hundreds of millions). Opining on what she's learned from birds, O'Kane writes that the eastern phoebe's habit of nesting in bridges, sheds, and other human structures taught her that "the presence of our species doesn't have to hurt other species." Her reverence for her avian subjects comes through on every page, and she retains a journalist's keen eye for detail: "The male cardinal reminded me of an Irishman, standing up to leave his pub at midnight, head held high and chest inflated as he sang his traditional a cappella goodbye song." This soars. Illus. Agent: Barney Karpfinger, Karpfinger Agency. (Feb.)
Kirkus Review
A human rights journalist embraces environmental justice. O'Kane had been an investigative human rights journalist, hate crimes researcher, and writing teacher in a women's prison before she moved to New Orleans in July 2005 to teach. A month later, Hurricane Katrina destroyed her house. As she witnessed her possessions drowned in the floodwaters, she realized "how much harm I had done just by the way I lived," and she vowed to live differently. In her engaging debut memoir, O'Kane recounts her transformation into an avid bird watcher and environmental activist. She has devoted thousands of hours to watching birds, "filled thirty-three field notebooks with scribblings on their doings and dramas, helped raise baby chickadees, bluebirds, wrens, and swallows in tiny birdhouses, volunteered in a baby bird nursery at a wildlife rehabilitation hospital, and taught hundreds of college students and children about them at two major universities." The first was the University of Wisconsin, where the author enrolled in graduate school. A class in ornithology set her on an unexpected path to closely observe the 141 bird species that inhabited Madison's Warner Park, across from her house. When she became aware of plans to dramatically change the park, she marshaled community support, which evolved into Wild Warner, a neighborhood environmental defense group. As part of her graduate studies, she started a program pairing local schoolchildren with undergraduate students who served as birding mentors, a program she established again when she took a position at the University of Vermont. Her students, she proudly reports, are working nationwide "as teachers, environmental educators, urban planners, land stewards, lawyers, journalists, researchers, and environmental activists. They are scientists, nature center directors, and school garden coordinators." Birds, she attests, "forged a new neural pathway in my brain, a joyful pathway" and a deep connection to community. A delightful homage to birds and nature in general. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
What if we were as smart as birds or at least smart enough to learn from them? O'Kane calls herself an accidental birder, as for most of her life she's been a peace activist and human rights journalist. But everything changed with Hurricane Katrina and the author's evacuee status. As she re-evaluated her life and her impact on the planet, she began to notice the birds in her yard. The scrappy little house sparrows lifted her spirits, taught her about resiliency, and opened her eyes to the world of birds. Birds showed her the way to an environmental science PhD and teaching the course that provides the book's title and a new form of activism when her favorite park, her urban haven, was threatened with development. Each chapter is connected to a bird, portrayed in an illustration, that the author learned life lessons from, and fascinating avian tidbits are scattered throughout. O'Kane's hard-to-put-down memoir of Katrina-caused PTSD and the salvation found in the natural world will resonate with readers, aspiring writers, the environmentally minded, activists, and bird lovers.
Table of Contents
| Prologue | ix |
| Chapter 1 Strange Teachers | 1 |
| Chapter 2 C'est Levee | 31 |
| Chapter 3 Song of the House Sparrow | 51 |
| Chapter 4 Our Lady of the Applesauce | 73 |
| Chapter 5 The Quiet Broken Ones | 93 |
| Chapter 6 A Category Five Plan | 113 |
| Chapter 7 Hail to the Thunder-Pumper | 139 |
| Chapter 8 Roll That Teacher Down the Hill | 167 |
| Chapter 9 The Great Geese Wars | 191 |
| Chapter 10 The Birder's Gaze | 213 |
| Chapter 11 In the Kingdom of Dumetella | 243 |
| Chapter 12 An Elephant, a Magnificent Jellyfish, and an American Woodcock Walk into a Bar | 271 |
| Epilogue | 305 |
| Author's Note | 315 |
| Acknowledgments | 317 |
| Notes | 321 |
| Index | 339 |
