Harare Review of Books

248 pages.

First published on June 28, 2023 (Mad Creek Books)

Non-fiction/memoir.

I’m what you might call an incipient birder—neither here nor there, interested but not really committed—yet. (Real birders will tell you there’s no such thing.) I’ve invested in no equipment, using only my eyes and a couple of apps; but I do love nature and the outdoors, so I’m more interested than most. I was curious to read this memoir from someone who’s been birding since childhood.

As the book’s subtitle will tell you, this is a rather unusual, somewhat complicated memoir. Gannon is half-Native American, and grew up on reservations in the care of his Indian mother, with an absent, alcoholic (and estranged) American Irish father. He experienced a lot of racism and emotional suffering, so his memoir is full of pain and anger. Reading the early part of the book, I began to worry that that was all there was—but as the author explains, this is neither a straightfoward memoir nor a book about birding, but something like both.

The format of the book is memories connected to specific bird sightings (lifers, the first time you encounter a particular species). Gannon is articulate about the world and all he sees: his mother’s struggles with racism, his own battles with identity and with his absent father, and also about the obsessions of birders—lifers, FOY (first of the year), and birding apps. There is a kind of dark humour in many of the entries, even when he talks about racism, religion, and Indian schools. Infusing everything is a reminder of Native worldview, and how affected or infected we all are (as colonized peoples) by the Western, dichotomous way of seeing. Gannon’s words about settler colonialism are harsh, angry and necessary.

In all, not an easy read; but I came away feeling refreshed and enlightened. I am also encouraged to take my baby birding hobby a lot more seriously, and have even installed a few more apps (:

Thank you to Edelweiss and to Mad Creek Books for this DRC.

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