A beautifully rendered debut memoir of family, legacy, conservation, the natural world--and those who inhabit it.

As a civil engineer, Sangamithra Iyer knows about resilience from studying soils and water. As an animal rights activist, she advocates for a revolution in how we value and relate to other species. And as the child of immigrants from India, she lives with the tension between carrying the burden of her family's past and a desire for fresh beginnings.

Animated by a series of questions--How best to disentangle ourselves from systems of harm? Is it possible to grasp the scale of planetary sorrow and emerge with truth and love as our guides, rather than despair? Can individual action lead to systemic change?--this memoir takes the form of three letters. Addressing the first of them to her grandfather, Iyer assembles the story of a man who embraced Gandhi's philosophy and went to work developing wells in Tamil Nadu. In a second letter, addressed to her father, she explores their shared interest in cultivating compassion for all beings and overcoming the desire to do harm. And then in a final letter, addressed to readers, she braids these explorations of her familial past with her own experiences as a woman of color and citizen of the world, always seeking ways to move beyond resignation and restore flow.

A lyrical story of lineages and an urgently needed reckoning with the ways bodies are both controlled and liberated, Governing Bodies is a timeless work with profound relevance.