Two Trees Make a Forest: In Search of My Family’s Past Among Taiwan’s Mountains and Coasts

Product Description

This “stunning journey through a country that is home to exhilarating natural wonders, and a scarring colonial past . . . makes breathtakingly clear the connection between nature and humanity, and offers a singular portrait of the complexities inherent to our ideas of identity, family, and love” (Refinery29).

A chance discovery of letters written by her immigrant grandfather leads Jessica J. Lee to her ancestral homeland, Taiwan. There, she seeks his story while growing closer to the land he knew.

Lee hikes mountains home to Formosan flamecrests, birds found nowhere else on earth, and swims in a lake of drowned cedars. She bikes flatlands where spoonbills alight by fish farms, and learns about a tree whose fruit can float in the ocean for years, awaiting landfall. Throughout, Lee unearths surprising parallels between the natural and human stories that have shaped her family and their beloved island. Joyously attentive to the natural world, Lee also turns a critical gaze upon colonialist explorers who mapped the land and named plants, relying on and often effacing the labor and knowledge of local communities.

Two Trees Make a Forest is a genre–shattering book encompassing history, travel, nature, and memoir, an extraordinary narrative showing how geographical forces are interlaced with our family stories.

Review

One of The Guardian’s Best Books of the Year

“Part travel guide, part memoir, part history, the new book by environmental historian Jessica J. Lee takes us on a journey through her ancestral home of Taiwan as she examines the landscape, the wildlife, the legacy of colonialism and her own roots. The book beautifully captures the deep connections between the natural world and family history.” —Karla Strand,
Ms. Magazine

“When Jessica J. Lee discovers letters written by her immigrant grandfather, she decides to head to her ancestral home of Thailand to connect with his experiences . . . Through this time, she learns more about her family’s past, including how colonialism shaped their fate.” —Laura Hanrahan,
Cosmopolitan, A Best Nonfiction Book of the Year

“Jessica J. Lee’s stirringly beautiful book, which mingles elements of memoir, travel writing, and history lesson, is intensely personal and profoundly generous, offering readers a glimpse into the rich legacies of both Lee’s family and their homeland, Taiwan . . . A stunning journey through a country that is home to exhilarating natural wonders, and a scarring colonial past. Lee makes breathtakingly clear the connection between nature and humanity, and offers a singular portrait of the complexities inherent to our ideas of identity, family, and love.” —Kristin Iversen,
Refinery29

“Lee offers a divergent model for a travel memoir, in which the land is the lead character in the work, itself an ancestor that she longs to know . . . Her perspective provides a refreshing departure from the norm: for Lee, it is not the landscape that is foreign but the author herself. Although she is a descendant of this land, she makes sure to establish herself as a respectful visitor, giving the island room to reveal itself to her as it wishes to be seen . . . Ultimately, she finds that her motherland is a place of perpetual migration, and at long last, she feels less adrift.” —Frances Nguyen,
Outside

“Love is attention, as the saying goes, and in this, Lee’s memoir truly shines. A remarkable exercise in careful attention, be it to the nuances of language, the turns of colonial history, or a grandfather’s difficult–to–read handwriting,
Two Trees Makes A Forest is a moving treatise on how to look closely and see truthfully, even as the fog rolls in.” —Rachel Heng,
BOMB

“After unearthing her grandfather’s hidden memoir, Lee becomes determined to piece together her family’s history as they moved from China to Taiwan to Canada. Her search brings her home to Taiwan where she explores the language, history, and memories of her family’s homeland. Her end product