First published 2024
Nemonte Nenquimo grows up in Ecuador's Amazon rainforest among the Waorani people, learning plant medicines and shamanic traditions from tribal elders. As a teenager, she leaves her barefoot forest childhood to study with evangelical missionaries in the city, walking on pavement and seeing cars for the first time. But ancestral spirits visit her dreams, calling her back to embrace Waorani culture. Nenquimo returns to the rainforest and becomes a climate activist, building alliances between Indigenous nations across the Upper Amazon. She leads her people in a legal battle against oil companies, ultimately protecting over half a million acres of primary rainforest. Drawing from generations of oral history, Nenquimo challenges centuries of colonial conquest and racist assumptions about Indigenous peoples, revealing a life as vital and uncompromising as the Amazon itself.
Genres: biography, memoir, environmental-science, climate-change, activism
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking, vital
Tropes: coming-of-age, found-family, return-to-roots
Setting: Amazon, Ecuador
Period: 21st-century
368 pages · Kindle Edition · Abrams Press