Where the Tiny Things Are: Feathered Essays

Each of these essays focuses on some micro aspect of everyday life as a technique for revealing the larger ecology of citizenship or parenting or teaching or simply existing in America today. A consideration of microbacteria opens a hallway of doors into questions about identity and mortality. In a reality awash with facts and information—it is Walker’s keen ability to twist the lens and zoom in on the tiniest but most significant things in our lives that makes this book such fun to read. Where the Tiny Things Are is a book of ideas as well as one of deep emotional tension and complexity. And while this is a book focused on the micro, it’s also big and rambunctious—filled with heart and deep thinking about some of the most important things in life.

Walker’s approach reminds me of a card trick called the shake change. Magicians use it to instantly turn one card into another. She gives you the particular, the discrete. Shake. Shake. Shake. Then, infinity, the universal. The card trick works on sleight of hand, but her book works via genuine honesty. Human perception does work this way, with the particular and the infinite in the same frame. It’s a surprise that is paradoxically familiar and true.