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Title details for The Life and Death of a Minke Whale in the Amazon by Fábio Zuker - Available

The Life and Death of a Minke Whale in the Amazon

Dispatches from the Brazilian Rainforest

by Fábio Zuker
Ezra E. Fitz
ebook
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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. As a group of Venezuelan migrants wait at a bus station in Manaus, looking for a place more stable than home, 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 for capitalist gain; 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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    May 10, 2022

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781571317537

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781571317537
      • File size: 6502 KB
    Kindle restrictions

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      February 28, 2022
      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. “The Poison Fields” is a memorable profile of Mr. Manioc, a farmer who recalls a way of life that is quickly being lost to industrialized soybean production. “Anamã” is a look at how climate change has altered a town that has “already seen the hospital submerged and the local cemetery relocated twice,” and the title essay describes Piquiatuba villagers who came together to aid a beached whale that had gotten lost in the Amazon River: “Partially covered by mud and moss, first impressions suggested it was simply a decomposing tree trunk.” 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.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook
Kindle restrictions

subjects

Languages

  • English

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