{"id":14726,"date":"2020-05-06T12:25:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-06T10:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/?p=14726"},"modified":"2025-01-06T19:33:50","modified_gmt":"2025-01-06T18:33:50","slug":"two-trees-make-a-forest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/2020\/05\/06\/two-trees-make-a-forest\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Trees Make a Forest"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jessica J. Lee\u2019s beautifully titled Two Trees Make a Forest <\/em>is part ode to Taiwan \u2013 a place that might have been home \u2013, part loving meditation on the natural world, and part investigative journey into a family\u2019s lost histories. In gentle prose that takes its time, Lee\u2019s non-fictional account invites her readers to muse on memory and migration, on family and place, on loss and determined hiking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book\u2019s base is biographical, as Lee sets out to navigate a maternal family history shrouded in mystery. Her grandparents, born and raised in China, found themselves swept by the tide of history to Taiwan, and on to Canada, where Lee herself was born and raised. Lee\u2019s search for their lost stories starts with just two clues: a letter written by her grandfather before his death but not before the onset of his Alzheimer\u2019s; and a phone bill, discovered in her grandmother\u2019s home after her death, which records calls to two unknown numbers, one in China and one in Taiwan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lee\u2019s filling in of the missing details of their story is interwoven with experiences gathered during a stay in Taiwan. These include to particular effect a number of hikes, as well as city trips and a birdwatching cycle-tour. A qualified environmental historian, Lee is particularly adept not just at spotting the finer details of the exceptionally heterogeneous flora and fauna she encounters in Taiwan, but also at delineating the histories of its recordings. She is able to give a wonderfully textured sense of how people have produced a body of knowledge on the island\u2019s smorgasbord of natural variety. These histories of knowledge production are entangled in its multiple, complex colonial histories \u2013 be they European, Japanese or Chinese.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book is also a reflection on language, and particularly perhaps, how language inflects a relationship to the natural world \u2013 as the book\u2019s last part\u2019s title \u6728\u6728 suggests (and in which are perhaps discernible those two trees that might make a forest):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u6728\u6728<\/p>

lin<\/p>

n. forest; woods; grove<\/p>

or<\/p>

n. a group of like persons.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a book that rewards patience. While at first I found myself yearning for a clearer drive forward, a desire for plot was soon eclipsed by an appreciation for the meandering walk through Taiwan and history the book was taking me on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jessica J. Lee\u2019s Two Trees Make a Forest is part ode to Taiwan, part loving meditation on the natural world, and part investigative journey into a family\u2019s lost histories. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":14729,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2479,103],"tags":[2597,164,195,166,2568,165],"class_list":["post-14726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-green-library","category-review","tag-green-library-en","tag-jessica-j-lee","tag-memoir","tag-nature-writing","tag-non-fiction-en","tag-two-trees-make-a-forest"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14726"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19787,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14726\/revisions\/19787"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pocolit.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}