Growing Papaya Trees

Jessica Hernandez

$20.95

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Author
Jessica Hernandez
Publish Date
2025-11-11
Book Type
Paperback
Publisher Name
North Atlantic Books
Subtitle
Nurturing Indigenous Roots During Climate Displacement
Number of Pages
224
ISBN-13
9798889840978
SKU
9798889840978

Description

Leading Binnizá and Maya Ch'orti' scientist Jessica Hernandez, PhD, weaves together Indigenous knowledge, environmental science, and personal family stories in her highly anticipated follow-up to the LA Times best-seller Fresh Banana Leaves.

Not every environmental problem is a result of climate change, but every environmental and climate change problem is a result of colonialism.


Dr. Jessica Hernandez offers readers an Indigenous, Global-South lens on the climate crisis, delivering a compelling and urgent exploration of its causes—and its costs. She shares how the impacts of colonial climate catastrophe—from warming oceans to forced displacement of settler ontologies—can only be addressed at the root if we reorient toward Indigenous science and follow the lead of Indigenous peoples and communities.

Growing Papaya Trees explores:
  • Energy as a sociopolitical issue
  • The interconnectedness of natural disasters, sociopolitical turmoil, and forced migration
  • Our oceans, our forests, and our Indigenous futures
  • Moving Indigenous science from mere acknowledgement into real action
  • How to nourish Indigenous roots when displaced beyond borders

Dr. Hernandez asks: what does it mean to be Indigenous when we’re separated from our lands? How do we nurture future generations knowing they, too, will have to live away from their ancestral places? She illuminates that cultures are not lost, even amid genocide, turmoil, war, and climate displacement—and shows us how to be better kin to each other against the ecological violence, colonial oppression, and distorted status quo of the Global North.