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The Life and Death of a Minke Whale in the Amazon
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About This Book
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.
Reviews
"Brazilian Journalist Zuker makes his English-language debut with a collection of harrowing dispatches from the Amazon...The essays cover Brazil's response to Venezuelan immigration, the impacts of climate change on the region, and the stark effects of Covid-19 on Indigenous populations...Zuker combines hard-hitting reportage with stories that veer from hopeful to elegiac, and his takes on his subjects' relationship with the rainforest are spot-on and direct, as when he notes that the Amazon as a region 'is so much discussed and yet so poorly understood'...This one deserves wide readership."
"In poignant, lyrical, even fable-like essays written primarily from the perspectives of Indigenous people, Brazilian journalist Zuker chronicles the destruction of the Amazon rainforest...The titular whale was an ocean-going animal found beached on the banks of a major tributary of the Amazon, hundreds of miles from the sea...Covered with mud and moss, it was initially thought to be a tree trunk...The subsequent attempts at rescue and the eventual death of the whale lead to a discussion of global trade, starting with the hunt for whale oil...By mixing in interviews with Venezuelan migrants escaping corruption back home and coverage of how the web of Brazilian 'modernization' impacts all kinds and all strata of people, Zuker presents an in-depth depiction of massive environmental and social decimation conveying urgently needed information and insights."
"While researching, journalist Zuker traveled the region, getting to know and interviewing many of the local residents and leaders, offering an up-close and personal view of their struggles...'The Indigenous struggle,' he writes, 'is not merely for existence but for a different existence: not to let themselves be absorbed into an all-encompassing white culture'...As these essays demonstrate, the Indigenous residents feel that they are being forced to integrate into modern society...Zuker also explores how modern medicine fails to take into account centuries-old Indigenous knowledge...Thanks to Zuker's essays, neglected voices from a remote part of the world receive much-needed attention...Recommended for anyone seeking to better understand the often overlooked world of Indigenous Amazonians."
"In Fábio Zuker's new essay collection, The Life and Death of a Minke Whale in the Amazon: Dispatches from the Brazilian Rainforest, translated from the Portuguese by Ezra E."
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