OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES –
March 1, 2022 – In 1960, at age 26, Goodall relocated from the U.K. to what is now Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park to live with and study the Kasakela chimpanzee community. There, she made a monumental discovery: that they had unique personalities and emotions. Her work forever changed the science of primatology. Since then, she has been fighting to conserve the habitat of her beloved chimps, as well as those of other species, through the Jane Goodall Institute and its global youth program, Roots & Shoots. For Atwood, climate change has long been a through line in her work, along with gender, identity, and religion. In her prescient 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale, environmental crises including toxic radiation and chemical spills have devastated what was once the United States, which has become a dark totalitarian patriarchal theocracy known as the Republic of Gilead. Outside of her writing, Atwood also works with the conservation nonprofit BirdLife International, for which she has served as an honorary president of its Rare Bird Club. This month, Atwood will publish a new book of essays, Burning Questions, a collection of nonfiction pieces she wrote between 2004 and 2021.
