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Human beings are killing the planet and themselves in the process. Cecile Pineda asks a simple question: Why? An urgent reframing of current ecological thinking, Apology to a Whale addresses what the intersection of relative linguistics and archeology reveals about the present world's power relations, and what the extraordinary communication of plants and animals can teach us. This masterpiece of creative nonfiction is a wild ride on the frontiers of archeo-linguistics in search of the greatest killer on Earth – us.
Cecile Pineda is the author of several novels, including Devil's Tango, Face, Fishlight: A Dream of Childhood, Frieze, and Love Queen of the Amazon. She is the recipient of the Californian Commonwealth Club's Gold Medal, the Sue Kaufman Prize, and a National Book Award nomination. She lives in Berkeley, California, USA.
"Cecile Pineda has the nerve to ask the one simple question that eludes our public posturing and computations. It is the one question that could save us: What has happened to our mind that we are killing our world? What is it, at the root of our culture that sets us against the rest of creation? The genius of this book is that the question supersedes the answers and takes us on explorations where we make our own discoveries. These widening apprehensions not only pierce us with heartache for what we have lost, but invite us to examine the imprisoning structures of the very language we use. Cecile Pineda has the rare and enviable capacity to address the big questions without falling into abstractions or sermonizing. It is the artist in her that I trust, and that utters so potent a call to personal and collective liberation."
– Joanna Macy, author, Coming Back to Life
