The Nerves and Their Endings:
essays on crisis and response
Overview
The body as a measuring tool for planetary harm. A nervous system under increasing stress.
In this urgent collection that moves from the personal to the political and back again, writer, activist, and migrant Jessica Gaitán Johannesson explores how we respond to crises.
She draws parallels between an eating disorder and environmental neurosis, examines the perils of an activist movement built on non-parenthood, dissects the privilege of how we talk about hope, and more.
The synapses that spark between these essays connect essential narratives of response and responsibility, community and choice, belonging and bodies. They carry vital signals.
Details
- Format
- Size
- Extent
- ISBN
- RRP
- Pub date
- Rights held
- Other rights
- Paperback
- 198mm x 129mm
- 192 pages
- 9781913348656
- GBP£9.99
- 11 August 2022
- WORLD ENGLISH
- AITKEN ALEXANDER ASSOCIATES
Categories
Awards
- Shortlisted for the 2023 ABDA Award for Best Designed Non-Fiction Cover
Praise
‘The climate crisis is nerve-racking … Jessica Gaitán Johannesson’s collection of essays offers an expansive constellation of responses … Her writing resists empty answers, striving instead for ethical rigour and nuance. This is a poetic, bodily thinking. Short, fragmented lyric poems appear between each essay, intensifying and expanding the connections … It’s the kind of writing that is as bracing as it is sobering.’
‘The Nerves and Their Endings is a beautifully written, original collection of essays that explores identity, place, home, and hope. These essays ask how we might not only live in a time of climate collapse, but how we might work towards a better future also — one of community, shared understanding, and tenderness, even in the face of such terrible inequality, cruelty, loss, and disaster. This is a book that’s truly necessary for our moment.’
About the Author
Jessica Gaitán Johannesson grew up between Sweden, Colombia, and Ecuador. She’s a bookseller and an activist working for climate justice, and lives in Edinburgh. Her first novel, How We Are Translated, was longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize.
