Книга The Nerves and Their Endings: essays on crisis and response
The body as a measuring tool for planetary harm. A nervous system under increasing stress.
In this urgent collection that moves from the personal to the political and back again, writer, activist, and migrant Jessica Gaitán Johannesson explores how we respond to crises.
She draws parallels between an eating disorder and environmental neurosis, examines the perils of an activist movement built on non-parenthood, dissects the privilege of how we talk about hope, and more.
The synapses that spark between these essays connect essential narratives of response and responsibility, community and choice, belonging and bodies. They carry vital signals.
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‘The climate crisis is nerve-racking … Jessica Gaitán Johannesson’s collection of essays offers an expansive constellation of responses … Her writing resists empty answers, striving instead for ethical rigour and nuance. This is a poetic, bodily thinking. Short, fragmented lyric poems appear between each essay, intensifying and expanding the connections … It’s the kind of writing that is as bracing as it is sobering.’
" - The Saturday Paper"
‘I devoured this bold, experimental collection of essays … Moving, funny, and fierce.’
" - The Bookseller"
‘Each line in this short book bears careful reading … an evolving, lyrical, and unrelenting analysis of the accelerating climate crisis, which in its short pages offers critique of capitalism, racism, colonialism, capitalism, racism, colonialism, patriarchy, and the contradictions within the climate movement itself.’
" - Sunday Independent"
‘Bold and deeply affecting.’
" - The Skinny"
‘In these elliptical, probing essays, Johannesson mines her own life – her experience of anorexia, her mother’s illness and death, her inner conflict over her work as an activist – to wrestle with larger philosophical questions about the illusion of self-sufficiency and control, the social inequities the climate crisis exposes, the ethical responsibilities inherent in bringing children into the world, and finally, what hope might look like in times like this.’
" - The Sydney Morning Herald"
‘These lyrical essays by bookseller Johannesson contemplate the consequences of impending climate collapse … Johannesson’s prose has a quiet, entrancing pull, and she cleverly structures her pieces to highlight unexpected connections, driving home her vision of interconnectedness. Understated and moving, this ruminative outing resonates.’
" - Publishers Weekly"
Praise for How We Are Translated:
‘A novel brimming with ideas and promise.’
" - The Sunday Times