Jessica J. Lee

I have learned many words for 'island': isle, atoll, eyot, islet, or skerry. They exist in archipelagos or alone, and always, by definition, I have understood them by their relation to water. But the Chinese word for island knows nothing of water. For a civilisation grown inland from the sea, the vastness of mountains was a better analogue: (dao, 'island') built from the relationship between earth and sky. Between tectonic plates and conflicting cultures, Taiwan is an island of extremes: high mountains, exposed flatlands, thick forests. After unearthing a hidden memoir of her grandfather's life, written on the cusp of his total memory loss, Jessica J Lee hunts his story, in parallel with exploring Taiwan, hoping to understand the quakes that brought her family from China, to Taiwan and Canada, and the ways in which our human stories are interlaced with geographical forces. Part-nature writing, part-biography, Two Trees Make a Forest traces the natural and human stories that shaped an island and a family.

On Memory, Migration and Taiwan

Two Trees Make a Forest

Fraser Simons

The concept and prose are great, I just found it, at least on audiobook, despite the authors fantastic narration (which is kind of rare for an author reading their own book, so props for that), I found it difficult to absorb all the information. It’s a lot of facts about her homeland, and I love the connection being drawn between herself and the land as a singular self history, but in practice I just found that it was hit and miss. 

I may like this more as a physical artifact because I tend to retain information like this much better when reading. But I also don’t seek out information like this because it’s not how I learn best. So it may just be for me specifically it was more challenging than for the average reader. 

Either way, I can see why it’s a Canada Reads nominee and I like the concept and narration and prose enough that it was enjoyable. I just know that I did not retain a lot of the information imparted, which dampens the experience when reflecting on it.

Mario Menti 

Loved this book. Looking at Taiwan through its nature and natural history, as well as the personal history of Lee's family, especially through a letter of her grandfather, this is a fantastic read for anyone interested in Taiwan.
Gorgeously written, and equally good at describing mountains, geography, plants, natural history, language, politics and family.

An exhilarating, anti-colonial reclamation of nature writing and memoir, rooted in the forests and flatlands of Taiwan from the winner of the RBC Taylor Prize for Emerging Writers "Two Trees Make a Forest is a finely faceted meditation on memory, love, landscape--and finding a home in language. Its short, shining sections tilt yearningly toward one another; in form as well as content, this is a beautiful book about the distance between people and between places, and the means of their bridging." --Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland A chance discovery of letters written by her immigrant grandfather leads Jessica J. Lee to her ancestral homeland, Taiwan. There, she seeks his story while growing closer to the land he knew. Lee hikes mountains home to Formosan flamecrests, birds found nowhere else on earth, and swims in a lake of drowned cedars. She bikes flatlands where spoonbills alight by fish farms, and learns about a tree whose fruit can float in the ocean for years, awaiting landfall. Throughout, Lee unearths surprising parallels between the natural and human stories that have shaped her family and their beloved island. Joyously attentive to the natural world, Lee also turns a critical gaze upon colonialist explorers who mapped the land and named plants, relying on and often effacing the labor and knowledge of local communities. Two Trees Make a Forest is a genre-shattering book encompassing history, travel, nature, and memoir, an extraordinary narrative showing how geographical forces are interlaced with our family stories.

Travels Among Taiwan's Mountains & Coasts in Search of My Family's Past

Christine Liu

I pulled this book off the shelf while browsing new releases at the library because I thought it was a nature book, but the title turned out to be a reference to Chinese characters. The Chinese word for wood is 木, "mu", written to look like a single tree. When you place two wood radicals next to each other, the resulting word is 林, "lin", which means forest.

Two Trees Make a Forest is difficult to pinpoint as any single category of book. It's part memoir, part family history, part history of Taiwan and its complicated relationship with mainland China, and part natural history of the terrain and flora of the island itself. Jessica J. Lee, who is an environmental historian, has written a written a work of quiet beauty, evocative of a solitary walk through lush woods. It's the story of discovering Taiwan, the place where her mother grew up, after her grandparents pass away and a rediscovered letter leads her to reconnect with the extended family she never knew. The sections about Lee's grandparents feel a bit disjointed, and they never became fully formed people in my mind, but I suspect that has a lot to do with the fact that there were so many things about their lives that she didn't uncover until after their deaths.

I've never been to Taiwan and know hardly anything about its history, so I was pleasantly surprised by how much I learned from reading this book. I knew vaguely about the civil war and political upheaval in China that pushed many Chinese people to emigrate to Taiwan and Hong Kong, but I hadn't really come across any books focusing on the Taiwanese perspective before. Lee's prose has a peaceful and gentle lull to it that made me long to visit Taiwan and experience its natural beauty for myself.

Mina Chan

Jessica Lee brings you through the cities, mountains, and forests of Taiwan in this beautifully detailed memoir of her journey to rediscover her roots after finding old letters written by her Gong (grandfather), and learning more from stories shared by her Po (grandmother). 

Two Trees Make a Forest was a beautiful story that touched my heart as a child of immigrant parents. I resonated with Lee's desire to find connections to a country she doesn't fully belong to, while also wishing language and distance were never barriers to knowing who her grandparents were.

one thing to note is Lee's background is in environmental history. her writing of the landscape and vegetation of Taiwan is packed with Latin terms, history of plants, etc. that made it (at times) difficult to follow. 

but if you're willing to keep reading and open your mind to imagine just how richly beautiful Taiwan was and still is, this book is touching in a lot of ways.

Two Trees Make a Forest On Memory, Migration and Taiwan

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