Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature
A thrilling book about the abounding queerness of the natural world that challenges our expectations of what is normal, beautiful, and possible.

Growing up, Patricia Kaishian felt most at home in the swamps and culverts near her house in the Hudson Valley. A child who frequently felt out of place, too much of one thing or not enough of another, she found acceptance in these settings, among other amphibious beings. In snakes, snails, and, above all, fungi, she saw her own developing identities as a queer, neurodivergent person reflected back at her—and in them, too, she found a personal path to a life of science.

In Forest Euphoria, Kaishian shows us this making of a scientist and introduces readers to the queerness, literal and otherwise, of all the life around us. Fungi, we learn, commonly have more than two biological sexes—and some as many as twenty-three thousand. Some intersex slugs mutually fire calcium carbonate “love darts” at each other during courtship. Glass eels are sexually undetermined until their last year of life, which stumped scientists once dubbed “the eel question.” Nature, Kaishian shows us, is filled with the unusual, the overlooked, and the marginalized—and they have lessons for us all.

Wide-ranging, richly observant, and full of surprise, Forest Euphoria will open your eyes and change how you look at the world around you.
1146215043
Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature
A thrilling book about the abounding queerness of the natural world that challenges our expectations of what is normal, beautiful, and possible.

Growing up, Patricia Kaishian felt most at home in the swamps and culverts near her house in the Hudson Valley. A child who frequently felt out of place, too much of one thing or not enough of another, she found acceptance in these settings, among other amphibious beings. In snakes, snails, and, above all, fungi, she saw her own developing identities as a queer, neurodivergent person reflected back at her—and in them, too, she found a personal path to a life of science.

In Forest Euphoria, Kaishian shows us this making of a scientist and introduces readers to the queerness, literal and otherwise, of all the life around us. Fungi, we learn, commonly have more than two biological sexes—and some as many as twenty-three thousand. Some intersex slugs mutually fire calcium carbonate “love darts” at each other during courtship. Glass eels are sexually undetermined until their last year of life, which stumped scientists once dubbed “the eel question.” Nature, Kaishian shows us, is filled with the unusual, the overlooked, and the marginalized—and they have lessons for us all.

Wide-ranging, richly observant, and full of surprise, Forest Euphoria will open your eyes and change how you look at the world around you.
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Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature

Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature

by Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian
Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature

Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature

by Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian

Hardcover

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Overview

A thrilling book about the abounding queerness of the natural world that challenges our expectations of what is normal, beautiful, and possible.

Growing up, Patricia Kaishian felt most at home in the swamps and culverts near her house in the Hudson Valley. A child who frequently felt out of place, too much of one thing or not enough of another, she found acceptance in these settings, among other amphibious beings. In snakes, snails, and, above all, fungi, she saw her own developing identities as a queer, neurodivergent person reflected back at her—and in them, too, she found a personal path to a life of science.

In Forest Euphoria, Kaishian shows us this making of a scientist and introduces readers to the queerness, literal and otherwise, of all the life around us. Fungi, we learn, commonly have more than two biological sexes—and some as many as twenty-three thousand. Some intersex slugs mutually fire calcium carbonate “love darts” at each other during courtship. Glass eels are sexually undetermined until their last year of life, which stumped scientists once dubbed “the eel question.” Nature, Kaishian shows us, is filled with the unusual, the overlooked, and the marginalized—and they have lessons for us all.

Wide-ranging, richly observant, and full of surprise, Forest Euphoria will open your eyes and change how you look at the world around you.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781954118904
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Publication date: 05/27/2025
Sales rank: 693,336
Product dimensions: 6.50(w) x 1.50(h) x 9.50(d)

About the Author

Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian is the curator of mycology at the New York State Museum, as well as faculty with the Bard Prison Initiative. Kaishian earned her PhD from SUNY College of Environmental Science & Forestry. She lives in the Hudson Valley.

Table of Contents

Interspecies Dens
Slugs, Snails, and Other Ways of Being
Swamp Creatures
Fungal Personhood
Cemetery Crows
Purple Love
Community Time
The Magnetism of Eels
Spring Ephemerals: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
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