Patricia Kaishian, an US scientist of Armenian descent, known in the scientific world for the taxonomy of fungi, wrote this beautiful book where she immerses herself in nature and develops the term “queer ecology”. Many organisms engage in same – sex behaviors in the nature, but this fact was often ignored in the male-dominated scientific world. Patricia Kaishian shows how the biologists were deliberately classifying some natural facts as deviant ones in order to create heteronormative narrative and project morals and colonialism on natural science.
The book dives into natural science; it is also about social movements and liberation of land and forest from the exploitation by plantation capitalism.
Patricia Kaishian started studying fungi because she saw the ambiguity of their gender identity. For example, some fungi have more than two biological sexes, and some even twenty-three thousand. The book consists of several essays on the queerness of fungi, snails, crows, slugs,
eels and other creatures, organisms and ecological systems with which she is deeply connected.
The book is accessible for a more general audience and beautifully written. Patricia Kaishian is inspired by the euphoria of the forest which was providing her with shelter and inspiration since her teenage years.
Olja Martynenka
Muzeum HERstorii Sztuki 