Brian Brett is the author of Trauma Farm: A Rebel History of Rural Life, which won the Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Prize, and Uproar’s Your Only Music, a Globe and Mail Book of the Year. He has also written numerous books of poetry and fiction.
Tuco: The Parrot, the Others, and a Scattershot World is biography about a history of bird/dinosaurs and the human relationship with birds, Tuco also explores how we “other” the world—abusing birds, landscapes, and each other—including Brett’s own experience with a rare genetic condition that turned his early years into an obstacle course of bullying and nurtured his affinity for winged creatures.
The book also provides an in-depth examination of our ideas about knowledge, language, and intelligence (including commentary from Tuco himself) and how as we learn more about animal languages and intelligence we continually shift our definitions of them in order to retain our “superiority.”
Below are two reviews of this non-fiction book:
“A wonderful gyre of a journey into the mind of man and bird, Tuco is an avian feast of astounding nuggets, tales, and insights. It is also a deep meditation on our place in time and nature: moving, funny, personal yet universal.”
Ronald Wright, author of A Short History of Progress
“Tuco is an avian odyssey, an homage to strange birds, both feathered and human. The path winds through the gardens of life, through adventure and heartache, with Brett as your eloquent guide, his delightfully mischievous parrot perched on his shoulder. A remarkable story of interspecies companionship.”
Charlotte Gill, author of Eating Dirt
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