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Overview
The Serviceberry, by Robin Wall Kimmerer, is a short nonfiction book published in 2024, adapted from an essay by Kimmerer which was published in Emergence Magazine in 2022
. The book, whose subtitle is Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, explores an alternate economic system—a gift economy—through discussions of Indigenous and ecological gift economies. It is a spiritual successor to Kimmerer’s 2013 best-selling book Braiding Sweetgrass, which earned Kimmerer the 2014 Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award. Both books mix Kimmerer’s Indigenous knowledge with personal experience to help the reader easily digest and emotionally resonate with complex topics. While Braiding Sweetgrass augments these explanations with discussions of scientific factors, The Serviceberry focuses instead on on economic concepts and ideas. Kimmerer, who was awarded a MacArthur Fellow and “genius” grant in 2022, is a Potawatomi botanist, author, and professor who champions the use of Indigenous knowledge hand in hand with science.Explore a full book summary & analysis, a discussion of the main ideas, and explanations of important quotes in The Serviceberry.
