With a Bird: A Reader on Avian Kinship

With a Bird is the second installment in Onomatopee's five-year, five-volume publication series creating "rich encounters between folklore and critical research." It follows the runaway success of the first book in the series, A Tree . As a reader on avian kinship, With a Bird , delves into the profound ways birds have inspired human understanding of life, blending scientific inquiry with spiritual reflection. Visual art, natural history, sociology, literature and more combine to explore how birds challenge and transcend boundaries—between human and non-human life, dream and reality, life and death, science and folklore and the domains of land, water and sky. Each chapter in this petite, canary-yellow paperback is dedicated to the symbolic roles birds play in human life, from death to dreams to freedom to fortune-telling. In addition to new works and essays, With a Bird, also includes reprinted literary texts on our avian companions by Daisy Hildyard ( The Second Body , 2017); John Berger ( The White Bird , 1985); Nicholas Mirzoeff ( The Whiteness of Birds , 2022); Maria Popova ( The New York Times , 2024); Marianne Elisabeth Lien ( Ducks into Houses , 2018) and Anna Tsing ( The Sociality of Birds , 2022). With contributions by Daniel Godínez Nivón, Ignace Cami, Bryony Dunne, Suzanne Walsh, Ai Ozaki, Sergio Rojas Chaves, Monika Czyzyk, Yuri Tuma, Manjot Kaur, and Sara Sejin Chang (Sara van der Heide). Includes text by John Berger, Daisy Hildyard, Natalie Lawrence, Marianne Elisabeth Lien, Nicholas Miroeff, Karan J. Odom, Maria Popova, and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing. Edited by Marjolein van der Loo Designed by Studio Yannick Nuss Published by Onomatopee, 2025 Softcover, 288 pages, with 286 duotone images, 4.25 × 7 inches ISBN: 978-9-49-338202-2