Mark: Okay, Michelle. Today's book in five words. Go. Michelle: Peacocks, prejudice, and finding home. Mark: Nice. Mine: 'Nature's weirdos are our saviors.' Michelle: I like that. It's got that blend of science and soul that this book is all about. Mark: It absolutely does. We're talking about World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. And she's not your typical nature writer. She's a celebrated poet, a Guggenheim Fellow, and the daughter of a Filipina mother and a South Indian father. She brings this incredibly fresh perspective to a genre that has historically been... well, very white. Michelle: Right. And that's exactly what makes the book so powerful. It's not just about the animals; it's about what the animals teach her about being human, and specifically, about being a brown woman in America. The book was a huge success, a New York Times Bestseller and Barnes & Noble’s Book of the Year, which shows how much people were craving this kind of voice. Mark: And it's because she uses nature as this incredible mirror for her own life. Each chapter is a short essay on a creature or plant, but it’s really a doorway into a memory, a feeling, a lesson learned. Michelle: That's a great way to put it. A doorway. So where do we start? That peacock story you mentioned is just devastating.

Mark: It really is. It perfectly captures this first major theme of the book: how nature becomes a reflection of our struggle for identity and belonging. The author, Aimee, is in third grade. She’s just moved to suburban Phoenix from Iowa, and her family had recently visited southern India, where she was mesmerized by the peacocks. Michelle: Okay, I can picture this little girl, full of excitement. Mark: Exactly. So her teacher announces an animal-drawing contest. Aimee is thrilled. She knows exactly what she wants to draw: a peacock. But the teacher insists everyone go to the library first. Aimee can't find any books on peacocks, so she just writes in her notebook, "Peacocks are the national bird of India." Michelle: Oh no, I have a bad feeling about this. Mark: Your feeling is correct. The teacher comes over, taps her notebook, and then announces to the whole class, "Some of us misunderstood the assignment... Some of us will have to start over and draw American animals. We live in Ah-mer-i-kah!" And she looks directly at Aimee. Michelle: That is just brutal for a little kid. To be singled out and shamed like that for celebrating your own heritage. What does she do? Mark: She's humiliated. She feels her face flush. She ends up drawing a bald eagle with an American flag, coloring it with what she calls a "saddest sepia crayon." She writes, "This is the story of how I learned to ignore anything from India." When she gets home, she explodes at her father, yelling about all the peacock decorations in their house, how embarrassing they are. Michelle: Wow. And the father? Mark: This is the part that breaks your heart. The next day, all the peacock decorations are gone. The wooden ones, the brass ones, the paintings. All vanished. Her father just quietly removed them. He understood her pain and shame, and his response was this silent, heartbreaking act of solidarity. Michelle: So the peacock becomes this symbol of a heritage she's taught to be ashamed of. That’s incredibly heavy. Does she find other animals to cope with these kinds of experiences? Mark: She does. And this is where the book gets so clever. She learns to use nature not just as a source of shame, but as a source of strength. Years later, her family moves to rural Kansas, and they live on the grounds of a mental institution where her mother works. The school bus has a special stop just for her and her sister, and the other kids stare at them, wondering if they're patients. Michelle: Another 'what are you, where are you from' moment. That sounds incredibly isolating. Mark: It was. And to cope, she imagines herself as a narwhal. She’s fascinated by this Arctic whale with its single, giant tusk. She pictures herself as a narwhal, able to blend in with the "Kansan ice" of her classmates' stares, holding her own with this secret, internal "saber." Michelle: I love that image. A secret weapon. Mark: It becomes a real one. One day on the bus, a boy asks if her mother is Chinese. She says no, Filipino. And the boy flips his eyelids inside out, pulls at the corners of his eyes, and taunts her. She's horrified, frozen. But she writes that the narwhal taught her "what it was like to see through sound what that boy... really was." It gave her a way to perceive his ugliness without letting it define her. Michelle: It's a beautiful metaphor. But I have to ask, does it feel a little... passive? Just enduring it with an internal image? Or is there more to it? Mark: That's a great question. And I think the author would say it’s the first step. It’s not about fighting back physically, but about developing an internal resilience. It's a form of camouflage and self-preservation. The narwhal's tusk isn't for fighting, it's a sensory organ. It's for navigating the dark. For her, it was a way to navigate the social darkness of prejudice without losing herself. Michelle: Okay, that reframes it for me. It’s not a weapon for attack, but a tool for perception. A way to see the truth of a situation and protect your own core. Mark: Precisely. And that leads perfectly into the second big idea. It’s not just about enduring. For her, actively seeking out wonder becomes a form of resistance and a way to connect. And sometimes, she finds it in the weirdest places.

Michelle: Okay, you have to tell me about the Corpse Flower as a dating filter. That sounds insane. Mark: It is, and it's brilliant. So, the corpse flower, or Amorphophallus titanum, is famous for two things: it blooms very rarely, and when it does, it emits a smell that's described as a combination of rotting flesh, dirty diapers, and Limburger cheese. She writes it's like what "emanates from the bottom of a used diaper pail left out in the late August sun." Michelle: That is… vividly disgusting. Why would anyone bring that up on a date? Mark: As a test! When she was single, she would describe this flower to her dates. Their reaction was an immediate tell. Most guys would get grossed out, change the subject, or look at her like she was crazy. She knew right away there would be no second date. Michelle: So she was weeding out the guys who couldn't handle the weird, messy stuff. Mark: Exactly. Then she meets the man who would become her husband. She tells him about the corpse flower, and he doesn't flinch. He's genuinely interested. He asks more questions. He even offers to take a road trip with her to see one bloom. And in that moment, she knew. She writes, "I’d met my match. A man who wouldn’t flinch at the messy or the new, a man who would be happy when I bloomed." Michelle: Wow. So it's like she's using nature's 'otherness' to find someone who accepts her otherness. It's the complete opposite of the peacock story, where her difference was punished. Here, embracing the weird and different is rewarded with love. Mark: That's the perfect way to put it. Wonder becomes a bridge to connection. And it's a theme that runs through her most tender memories, too, especially with her family. She talks about fireflies, for example. Michelle: I feel like everyone has a firefly memory. Mark: They do, but she ties it to something deeper. She notes how their populations are dwindling every year because of human light pollution. A single car's headlights can disrupt their blinking love signals for hours, preventing them from mating. This fact makes her melancholy, this idea that "something so full of light would be gone so soon." Michelle: That’s a powerful environmental point, but how does it connect to her personally? Mark: For her, the light of a firefly is inextricably linked to her mother. She remembers family road trips where her mother, usually frazzled from work, would become soft and tender. She’d stroke her daughter's bangs, her hands smelling of Oil of Olay and spearmint gum. These were slow, quiet moments of pure love. The firefly's blinking becomes a mantra for her. She writes it's as if they're saying: "I am still here, you are still here, I am still here, you are still here." Michelle: That gives me chills. It’s a message of presence, of reassurance, in the face of potential loss—both for the fireflies and for her own family. It’s a light in the darkness, literally and figuratively. Mark: And that’s the core of it. She finds these astonishments, these "worlds of wonders," and uses them to make sense of love, loss, identity, and injustice. She even talks about how seventeen out of twenty-two students in a recent class she visited had never seen a firefly. They thought she was making them up. Michelle: That's heartbreaking. It shows how disconnected we're becoming. The book feels like a call to pay attention before all the lights go out.

Mark: It is. And when you put all these stories together—the peacock, the narwhal, the corpse flower, the firefly—it feels like the book is making a much bigger argument. It's not just a collection of nice nature essays. Michelle: I agree. It’s a philosophy for how to live. It’s arguing that wonder isn't a luxury; it's a survival tool. Mark: Exactly. In a world that tries to make you feel small or invisible, or that bombards you with environmental despair and social injustice, the act of paying patient, loving attention—to a firefly, a weird flower, even a newt—is how you reclaim your space. It's how you remember you're connected to something magnificent and resilient. Michelle: It’s an act of defiance, in a way. To choose wonder over cynicism. To choose observation over distraction. It makes you want to put your phone down and just... look. To find your own catalpa tree, that symbol of shelter she returns to. Mark: And it’s a practice. It requires, as she says, "that we be curious enough to forgo our small distractions in order to find the world." It's not passive. It's an active choice to look for the light. Michelle: The book ends with this incredible line about a firefly's luminescence being the spark that reminds us to cherish the planet, like a heartbeat. It makes you ask, what's the small wonder you've been overlooking? Mark: A powerful question to end on. Michelle: This is Aibrary, signing off.