The Possibility of Tenderness

Finalist for the 2025 Wainwright Prize in Nature Writing "Extraordinary . . . Surprising at every turn and rewarding in ways you never expect."—Marlon James “An extraordinary, necessary book from a brilliant writer. A new song of the earth.”—Robert Macfarlane From an exciting new voice in international literature, a profoundly moving memoir that explores the Black experience in the natural world and the transformative power of plants. Jason Allen-Paisant grew up in the May Day Mountains of Jamaica. The cycles of his boyhood revolved around tending the plots of cabbage, tomatoes, and yams dotting the clay hillsides; playing beneath the cavernous roots of cotton trees; and climbing trunks of the fruit trees that fed him and his grandmother.