Even in the strange and the unlovely, Nezhukumatathil finds beauty and kinship. “What the peacock can do,” she tells us, “Is remind you of a home you will run away from and run back to all your life.” The axolotl teaches us to smile, even in the face of unkindness the touch-me-not plant shows us how to shake off unwanted advances the narwhal demonstrates how to survive in hostile environments. But no matter where she was transplanted-no matter how awkward the fit or forbidding the landscape-she was able to turn to our world’s fierce and funny creatures for guidance. As a child, Nezhukumatathil called many places home: the grounds of a Kansas mental institution, where her Filipina mother was a doctor the open skies and tall mountains of Arizona, where she hiked with her Indian father and the chillier climes of western New York and Ohio.
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