Governing Bodies

by Sangamithra Iyer

English 400 pages 1 edition

‘Iyer traces her passion for conservation and animal rights activism back two generations in this beautiful debut memoir… This singular personal history edifies as much as it charms.’— Publishers Weekly As a civil engineer, Sangamithra Iyer knows about resilience from studying soils and water. As an animal rights activist, she advocates for a revolution in how we value and relate to other species. And as the child of immigrants to the US, she searches for submerged histories. This beautifully rendered memoir of family, legacy, conservation, the natural world—and those who inhabit it—is animated by urgent and fundamental questions—How do we disentangle ourselves from systems of harm? Is it possible to grasp the scale of planetary sorrow and emerge with truth and love as our guides, rather than despair? What is the relationship between individual action and systemic change? In trying to answer them, Governing Bodies takes the form of three meandering rivers, each written as a letter. Addressing the first of them to her grandfather, Iyer assembles the story of a man who embraced Gandhi’s philosophy and went to work developing wells in Tamil Nadu. In a second letter, addressed to her father, she explores their shared interest in cultivating compassion for all beings. And then in a final letter, addressed to readers, she braids these explorations of her familial past with her own experiences of growing up and coming of age in the US, and recognizing herself as a citizen of the world. Discarding hopelessness and cynicism, she seeks to look at the natural world and our human choices with compassion and understanding. A lyrical story of lineages and an urgently needed reckoning with the ways we control as well as liberate bodies—our own and those in the natural world— Governing Bodies is a profound work of timely relevance.