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How I Became a Tree by Sumana Roy is a reflective, genre-blurring work that invites readers to slow down and embrace the ‘tree-time’ rhythm of life. It interweaves memoir, literary criticism, botany, spiritual philosophy, and personal observation to explore what it means for humans to see, feel, and even become like trees. Here’s a breakdown:
🌿 What It’s About
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Slow down to tree-time: Roy expresses a longing to escape our fast-paced world and adopt the more measured, expansive life of trees (summerfieldbooks.com).
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Anthropomorphizing trees: She experiments with describing trees using human traits—asking questions like: Are trees freelancers or salaried employees? (goodreads.com).
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Blending disciplines: Drawing from literature, science, art, and spirituality, Roy explores trees through voices like Tagore, Bose, Buddha, Lawrence, and Atwood (summerfieldbooks.com).
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Spiritual and ecological reflection: The book probes our deep bonds with trees—from shadow play in childhood to Tagore-inspired gardens in Santiniketan (bookey.app).
📚 Key Themes & Moments
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"Tree-shaped snug fits in literature": Roy speaks of seeking tree-shaped spaces in her reading and writing life (bookey.app).
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Bare-tree beauty: She marvels at the elegance of leafless trees, urging us to find value in simplicity .
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Shadows over substance: In one chapter, she explores shadows cast by trees—not the trees themselves—as symbols of the fleeting, changeless imprint of nature (bookey.app).
🔎 Strengths & Critiques
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Strengths: Many readers call it a “radiant… peerless masterwork,” praising its transformative impact on how we perceive the world (goodreads.com). Nanury Roy’s lyricism and multidisciplinary insights are highlighted as uniquely enchanting (summerfieldbooks.com).
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Critique: Some feel the anthropomorphism and metaphors come off as overly sentimental or lacking in scientific grounding . For example:
“I found the latter annoying, pretentious and fake deep.” (goodreads.com)
👤 Who Should Read It?
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Ideal for: Lovers of nature writing, philosophical memoir, and anyone seeking a literary meditation on our relationship with the natural world.
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May not appeal to readers seeking data-driven science or straightforward narrative structure—it's more poetic and associative than expository.
🎯 Sample Quotations
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“A tree grows upward; it is driven by a singular urge to spread towards the sky—trunk, branch, and leaf.” (goodreads.com, bookey.app)
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“What was it about bare trees, shorn and leafless, that had attracted my eye?” (bookey.app)
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“In street corners… But where were the statues of trees?” (bookey.app)
✅ Final Take
How I Became a Tree is a contemplative journey urging us to live more like trees—slower, quieter, attuned to light, shadow, resilience, and rootedness. It's a lyrical and meditative read that resonates deeply with those who yearn to reconnect with the natural world.
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10+ perfect answers here, enjoy them all. The ones by Being, Pamela and Latha are particularly succinct.
Another angle is to examine (not for too long or too seriously:-) the obvious human delusion and impatience inherent in the question itself: Why does the human mind insist on dividing up Life or What Is into “aims” and “practices” to reach those “aims?” Why does the dream-character insist on turning Life into a problem that needs to be solved, rather than simply a reality to be experienced?
The question is about the expression of Consciousness, yet it was obviously not asked by pure Consciousness, but by the impotent ‘deductive-reasoning’ mind.
‘If’ so, then “why.”
Pointless intellectual rabbit-hole reasoning that can never hope to pierce the apparent inclination of Consciousness’ apparent actions (apparent because in Reality there is no ‘time’ and nothing ever happens.)
Apparently, part of Consciousness’ expression is a ‘mind’ in one particular dream-expression (humans only - no other species has this) that CANT JUST SIT STILL AND BE. It has to fidget. It has to ‘figure out.’ It has to assume there is something or somewhere better to get to, label that the “aim,” and then devise, ad nauseam, sets of instructions labeled ‘practices’ or manuals or ‘scriptures’ on how to ‘get there. And then, worse yet, drive itself to distraction asking inane questions like, “Why did Consciousness or God create us to feel this way - separate and suffering” - or “If experiencing separateness was an integral part of Consciousness’ or God‘s expression/intention, why did It also apparently invent non-dual clarity, pundits and practices to eradicate that illusion?”
Is it possible that another of Consciousness’ expression could be: STOP! Just stop all the mental masturbation, all the ‘seeking,’ paths & practices and just BE.
There has never been any non-dual practices. There has never been any aim to dissolve the separate self, except in that illusory self’s dream-of-separateness. Even when erroneously-labeled ‘non-dual’ sages like Ramana Maharshi apparently said to ‘practice ‘ Neti Neti or Nan Yar (“Who am I”) they were dream-characters telling other dream-illusions how they could become dream-escapers, which is patently impossible & futile…while Consciousness/Awareness silently IS the whole thing/non-thing.
“All spiritual practices (including ‘primary non-dual “aims”) are illusions created by illusionists to escape illusion.”
― ram das
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