West Virginia University Press has announced the release of Isaac Yuen’s “Utter, Earth.”
A light, literary take on an animal book for grown-ups, a tongue-in-cheek self-help column with lessons drawn from nature, a sort of hitchhiker’s guide to the more-than-human world — Yuen's verbal tour de force is a celebration, through wordplay and earthplay, of our planet’s riotous wonders.
David Naimon, host of the podcast “Between the Covers,” praises the book writing, “Essays that — in their curiosity, play, and care — aim to weave us back into a world of which we are but one small part.”
In a time of dirges and elegies to the natural world, “Utter, Earth” features odes to sloths, tributes to trilobites and ringing endorsements for lichen. For animal lovers and readers of Brian Doyle, Aimee Nezhukumatathil and Amy Leach, each essay of this one-of-a-kind collection combines joyous language, whimsical tangents, and scientific findings to remind and reconnect readers with those to whom they are inextricably bound.
Jessica J. Lee, author of “Two Trees Make a Forest and Dispersals,” declares, “In ‘Utter, Earth,’ animals and language are alive: rollicking, wild, enthralling. Isaac Yuen writes with so much enchantment and humor. This is a book that will upend how you see the natural world — and our own place in it.”