News

An Activist Memoir Challenges The World to Listen and Heal
Bridget Kinsella -- 8/28/00
"Every morning when I wake up, I ask myself whether I should write or blow up a dam," writes Derrick Jensen in A Language Older Than Words, a book classified by its independent publisher, Context Books, as Memoir/Philosophy of Nature. An activist, writer and teacher, Jensen uses his experience of growing up in a family with an emotionally, physically and sexually abusive father to explore how society denies the pure nature of things in order to justify and continue a history of exploitation--of both people and the environment. "My family is a microcosm of the culture," he writes. "What is writ large in the destruction of the biosphere was writ small in the destruction of our household."
The message of what has been called a p tic and brutally honest book is slowly finding resonance with independent booksellers. "I think the groundswell on this one is inspiring," said Elise Cannon, national accounts manager at Publishers Group West, the book's distributor. "Every week we get a letter or review praising it as a classic in the making."

Linda Knopp, senior buyer at Malaprop's Bookstore & Cafe in Asheville, S.C., said A Language Older Than Words is one of her current favorites. It's now in the staff picks section of the store. "That's a perpetual one on my shelf," Knopp told PW. At a rate of about five a week, Malaprop's has sold nearly 90 copies since the book was published in May. "That's a lot for a book like this," she said.

"It's intense for a lot of people," agreed Isis Robins, events coordinator at Gateways Bookstore and Café in Santa Cruz, N.Mex. "But the people who have read it are completely enthralled."

"That usually hooks 'em." Even the blurbs, from writers Frances Moore Lappe (Diet for a Small Planet), Luis Rodriguez (Always Running) and Thomas Berry (The Dream of the Earth), are cautionary, with phrases like "shock you to your core" and "brilliant and disturbing."

"I thought it was so powerful and important," said Knopp. "If people can stick with it, they'll see that it's uplifting and inspiring."

Lappe, who is both a friend and a fan of Jensen's, was so excited about commenting on his book that she called PW hours after she returned from Kenya, where she was working on a new book to mark the 30th anniversary next year of Diet for a Small Planet. Lappe, famous for her work on the "culture of denial," said she always felt there was something missing. "Derrick's work helped me identify that," she said. "He is allowing himself to acknowledge all of the pain, and still heal--and he still holds the notion that hope d sn't depend on us distancing ourselves from the dark side."

In its four-month history Language has sold out its 5,000-copy first printing and, according to Context Books publisher Beau Friedlander, is steadily selling its next 5,000 copies. "Far from being over, it is just beginning," he said. "Most publishers would have moved on by now. I plan to be promoting this book in the spring." Jensen has already been on one author tour, which covered 30 cities in the Southwest and the Northwest. Plans for an eastern tour are in the works now for November.

Much of the media attention so far can best be described as grassroots; journalists and columnists in lots of little and not-so-little local newspapers from Spokane to Poughkeepsie agree: "Hey, here's a book that is actually saying something about the pathology of violence in our culture." It is a Book-of-the-Month Club September selection. Other notable media in the works: a feature by the Associated Press; Jensen's commentary on rape for NPR; and mentions in a variety of magazines, including Sierra Club and Bomb.

Sierra Club books published Jensen's first book, Listening to the Land, a collection of interviews with various environmentalists that received a USA Today Critic's Choice Award in 1995.