How to Be a Living Thing summary

When National Geographic ran a cover photo of Koko the gorilla gently cradling a kitten, the image transfixed its readers. The 280-pound western lowland gorilla had learned sign language as a youngster and astonished observers by inventing word combinations, telling jokes, and making requests. Given the choice between a stuffed toy and a living companion, she asked for a kitten. She named the cat All Ball and doted on her as if she were her own child.

The tenderness between gorilla and cat fascinated the public. But it was loss that revealed something deeper. When All Ball was killed by a car, Koko understood immediately. She signed “Bad, sad, bad” and later cried through the night, hooting and pounding the walls of her cage. Some critics suggested she was mimicking her handlers, but her raw sobs spoke louder than any signs. Words can be slippery; but grief’s sound is unmistakable.

Once, at a retreat center filled with animals, Mari only wanted to spend time with the donkeys. But before she could reach them, a farmhand named Gary stopped her to introduce the flock of chickens that had gathered in her path. Stroking a black hen called Edna with surprising tenderness, he described their personalities as if introducing old friends. One hen was sweet, another acted like a dog, and soon Mari found herself with a bird perched on her lap, listening to gentle clucks and chirps that sounded less like barnyard clichés and more like soft conversation.

Gary explained that these sounds were meaningful: warnings, reminders of social hierarchy, signals of joy or fear. To him, the flock was talking. When Mari returned the next day, dozens of chickens hurried toward her, peeping and squealing as if gossiping among themselves. She couldn’t shake the question: If this isn’t language, then what is it?

When biologist Frank Brown moved oysters from a Connecticut shore to a lab near Chicago, he expected them to lose touch with the tides. At first, they kept eating on New Haven time. But gradually, their schedule shifted until it aligned with when high tide would have occurred in Illinois. In total darkness, with no cues from the outside world, the oysters had still tracked the moon. Brown concluded that life pulses in rhythms beyond human senses – a claim that earned him ridicule, but also showed how narrow our definitions of knowledge can be.

For Mari, Brown’s discovery echoes in her own life. In dance class, movement gives her a way to express emotions that resist neat explanations – grief, survivor’s guilt, small bursts of joy. When a neurologist turned up to a class to observe, hoping to prove dance’s therapeutic benefits, the need for evidence felt almost absurd. Mari already knew it in her body. She calls it transrational knowledge: truth that exceeds reason but still feels undeniable.

When an autoimmune attack on Mari’s nerves left her partially paralyzed, the wheelchair she received felt like liberation. She could move again – go outside, visit a café, ride a bus. At that time her legs felt impossibly heavy, but thankfully, the paralysis wasn’t permanent. 

Reflecting on that time, it was how others reacted that struck her most, rather than her regained mobility. People looked away or overcompensated with awkward smiles. Later, a hairdresser with a disabled daughter put it bluntly: “No one wants to see disabled people.” The words rang true. Society prefers to keep disability, aging, or homelessness out of sight, because these realities force us to face our own fragility.

In 1349, plague swept through Norwich, the largest city in provincial England. Among its survivors was a child named Julian, who had once spent her days chasing cats through alleyways, stealing pretzels, and weaving fairy homes under blackthorn trees. The joyful midsummer festivals she knew – bonfires, songs, and barefoot games – were replaced by empty stalls, body carts, and the bell cry of “Bring out your dead.” 

By adulthood, she’d endured repeated outbreaks, likely losing family and neighbors, until grief itself seemed to hollow her. On what she thought was her deathbed, Julian broke open into visions that reimagined God not as punisher but as loving mother. She began to write of our natural bodies not as fallen or shameful but as beautiful, inseparable from soul, part of the goodness of creation.