July 15, 2024
In this impassioned autobiography, Nenquimo teams up with her husband, Anderson, to recount her journey from young Indigenous girl to renowned environmental activist. Nenquimo was born in 1985 and grew up in an Ecuadorian rainforest tribe called the Waorani, where she was subject to persistent conversion efforts by Christian missionaries. Though Nenquimo felt attached to Waorani traditions, she succumbed to the proselytizing as a teenager, agreeing to be baptized and moving to a nearby Christian village, where she was sexually abused by her host. After she returned home, Nenquimo was galvanized to protect Waorani ways of life and began organizing against oil companies’ rapidly increasing interest in her tribe’s rainforest land. As Nenquimo builds toward the landmark 2019 Ecuadorian court case she led, which successfully blocked a government plan to develop oil infrastructure on half a million acres of rainforest, she educates readers on Waorani customs—including vividly rendered afternoons spent with her community storyteller—and makes space for moments of profound joy (the birth of her daughter) and sadness (her mother’s relinquishing of Nenquimo’s baby sister to missionaries in hopes they will “teach her the white people’s ways”). This fascinates and inspires.
