Ask a Bookseller: ‘We Will Be Jaguars’ by Nemonte Nenquimo

On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now. This week, as our series on books of hope and connection continues, Laynee Wessel with Bliss Books & Bindery in Stillwater, Okla., recommended a memoir about our ties to the natural world. The book is “We Will be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People” by Nemonte Nenquimo and Mitch Anderson. Nemonte Nenquimo is a climate activist who lives in the Amazon region in Equador. A leader of the Waorani people, she made the list of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in 2020. Her memoir describes her growth as an activist and centers on an international movement by Indigenous nations in the Amazon that succeeded in protecting over half a million acres of rainforest from oil and logging companies. Nenquimo’s co-author is her husband, Mitch Anderson; the two co-founded the nonprofit Amazon Frontlines. Wessel recommends the book for fans of “I, Rigoberta Menchú.” She says this memoir, with its poetic translation by Anderson, is narrative in style and rooted in Indigenous oral tradition.