Two Trees Make a Forest: In Search of My Family's Past Among Taiwan's Mountains and Coasts (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781646220007)

This "stunning journey through a country that is home to exhilarating natural wonders, and a scarring colonial past . . . makes breathtakingly clear the connection between nature and humanity, and offers a singular portrait of the complexities inherent to our ideas of identity, family, and love" (Refinery29).

A chance discovery of letters written by her immigrant grandfather leads Jessica J. Lee to her ancestral homeland, Taiwan. There, she seeks his story while growing closer to the land he knew.

Lee hikes mountains home to Formosan flamecrests, birds found nowhere else on earth, and swims in a lake of drowned cedars. She bikes flatlands where spoonbills alight by fish farms, and learns about a tree whose fruit can float in the ocean for years, awaiting landfall. Throughout, Lee unearths surprising parallels between the natural and human stories that have shaped her family and their beloved island. Joyously attentive to the natural world, Lee also turns a critical gaze upon colonialist explorers who mapped the land and named plants, relying on and often effacing the labor and knowledge of local communities.

Two Trees Make a Forest is a genre-shattering book encompassing history, travel, nature, and memoir, an extraordinary narrative showing how geographical forces are interlaced with our family stories.

Author: Jessica J. Lee
ISBN-10: 1646220005
ISBN-13: 9781646220007
Publisher: Catapult
Language: English
Published: 08/04/2020
Pages: 304
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.40w x 0.90d

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 06/01/2020
Library Journal 07/01/2020 pg. 68
Foreword 08/26/2020