Books That Inspire 2005
 
A Language Older Than Words
Derrick Jensen


A Language Older than Words is both memoir and nature essay. It is easily one of the most profoundly moving books I have ever read … amazing, beautiful, disturbing, provoc-ative, passionate, poetic. The author courageously breaks the silence on his own story of abuse, and skillfully interweaves the atrocities of domestic abuse with the atrocities of our “civilization” and ecological destruction.

His ceaseless mantra is that we do not have to live this way. His hard-hitting truth telling of the culture of denial we live in stands in counterbalance to the hope that if we begin to live with compassion for our own real suffering, and if we begin to rip off the layers of denial, we will find a world of deep connection waiting for us … a language older than words. Derrick Jensen’s refusal to be silenced, his willingness to say “the emperor has no clothes,” gives me the courage to continue to speak and live my own truth.
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Jeannine Desmarais

formerly with OU Scholars Program