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Foreshadowing
Genre
Explanation and Analysis:
In some ways, Braiding Sweetgrass is a genre unto itself. It can be classified most broadly as nonfiction nature writing because its main focus is providing information and ideas about the natural world. Like many nonfiction books, it has elements of an academic book. Kimmerer is an academically trained scientist, so it is natural that her book has a thesis, an argument, and evidence that she marshals in support of that argument. At the same time, the book is pitched to a broader audience than most academic books and ventures outside the traditional strictures of academic science writing.
One convention of academic science writing that the book breaks is the idea that a scientist should present objective findings and keep their own perspective out of the argument. Many academic books by Kimmerer's colleagues are purposely as free as they can be of anecdotes and emotion. Kimmerer's book, on the other hand, is part memoir. Her personal experience and feeling is central to the book. She even experiments with different perspectives, writing in one chapter from her daughter's point of view. This experimentation reflects Kimmerer's insistence that science writing should include more of scientists' personal perspective. Everyone brings their own experience and knowledge to the table, she claims, and this background informs the science. In her case, her Indigenous background has driven her to conduct experiments based on hypotheses that would never have occurred to her had she stuck to "objective" science.
In addition to a science book and a memoir, Kimmerer's book might be classified as a manifesto. A manifesto declares a certain viewpoint and intention. It is often associated with political parties, but anyone can write a manifesto. Kimmerer presents the viewpoint that scientific knowledge and Indigenous wisdom are not antithetical, but rather that they can benefit from one another. She sets an intention for herself to "braid" them together with her own experience, modeling a new way of understanding the natural world and our interdependence with it. She also urges others to think about this interdependence. By so doing, she claims, we might be able to begin solving several social and environmental crises. Her manifesto is not quite directed at politicians, even though it is clear that she would love politicians to begin caring more about humans' relationship with the natural world. More than this though, she directs the book toward everyday people, urging them to make choices that account for our interdependence with plant life.
