Description
In this vulnerable and urgent memoir, Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant explores the shifting relationship between humans, animals, and the earth through her personal journey to becoming a wildlife ecologist. Growing up in the diverse and bustling California Bay Area, she often felt worlds away from the white male adventurers she watched explore the wilderness on TV and dreamed of sleepless nights under crowded rainforest canopies and the starry skies of the savanna.
As Rae set off on her own path, she found a profession with few scientists who looked like her and began to see nature’s delicate balance in a new light. In studying the connections among humans, animals, and place, she has come to realize the vital roles we each play—not just as stewards of land and water, but for our communities and ourselves. Wild Life follows Rae from her urban childhood in California and Virginia to adventures in some of the world’s most rugged and remote locales.
Hers is a story about a career in the wild spanning nearly two decades: carving a niche as one of very few Black female scientists, confronting expectations she had to leave behind, and learning many lessons along the way. Through her personal story of resilience and adaptation, Rae argues for a more connected, socially and ecologically conscious world. Spanning the Great Plains of North America to the rainforests of Madagascar, Wild Life sheds light on our pivotal relationship and responsibility to the natural world and the relatives—both human and otherwise—that we share it with.