Parish Summer Read

Announcing the St. Ignatius Parish Summer Read!

The St. Ignatius Parish Anti-Racism Committee is proud to sponsor this year's St. Ignatius Parish summer read. Join us as we embark on this annual parish tradition! This year our reading will bring us wisdom from our Indigenous Sisters and Brothers that pertains to our natural world. This summer we’ll be reading Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of Plants, and discussing it on Sunday, September 20, following hospitality after the 10 am Mass.

Braiding Sweetgrass is a nonfiction work by botanist and Citizen Potawatomi Nation member Robin Wall Kimmerer. Richard Powers, in The New York Times, calls the author, “a font of endless knowledge, both mental and spiritual." Robin Wall Kimmerer asks questions of nature using the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she asks us to embrace the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers.

Using her life experience as mother and as an indigenous scientist, Kimmerer shows how other living beings – aster and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, algae and sweetgrass –  offer us gifts and lessons. 

The book is available to order online, and there is a free pdf of the entire book, also available online. Check you email newsletter and website for links. The book is widely available online, through bookstores and through the library. If purchasing the book, we urge you to please support your local independent bookstore.

Also, there is a young person's edition appropriate for middle grade and high school readers.

Happy Reading!

Ana Gonzalez-Lane, St. Ignatius Parish Anti-Racism Committee