Nemonte Nenquimo is a fierce story teller. If you think your heart needs a jump to feel something read this book. It will make you feel rage, it will make your cry, it will make you want to go outside and climb the nearest tree, it'll make you want to reconnect with the world. Most importantly the book opens you up to a fight that is happening daily in the Amazon forest. "We Will Be Jaguars" is a first hand account of when missionaries came to the Amazon forest and contacted the indigenous tribes there. It is Nemonte's story, helped written by Mitch Anderson. It is her story of her life and her people's fight to secure their lands from oil companies. Nemonte's details regaining her heritage when it was so close to being lost.

This is truly a 5/5. I literally recommend this book, talk about this book to whoever will listen.

Trigger warning: sexual assault.

Thank you NetGalley for providing this title. Thank you Abrams Press. Thank you Nemonte for telling your story and showing your fight.

We Will be Jaguars was an inspiring and vulnerable story. The narrative was moving and kept me wanting to learn more. It gave me a new perspective on indigenous cultures.

An important and stirring book. This is both a memoir and a manifesto. Nemonte Nenquimo was a name that I didn't know before picking up this book, but not one that I will forget. At times a hard read, it's also very compelling and unputdownable.

Nemonte, a Waorani activist, gives her Indigenous community the opportunity to speak on their own terms for the very first time. She won a historic legal victory against the Ecuadorian government to protect native land in the Amazon rainforest, and campaigned against the encroaching oil companies, miners, and evangelicals. This immensely important book is her call to action: she wants investors, developers, and missionaries to read it, to engage in dialogue with her and her people, because - as she writes - "If we continue on this path of little by little destroying forests, destroying rivers, destroying air, the consequences are going to be awful for humans and cultures around the world, for all forms of life. And I want people to wake up."

The perfect comp title would be "The Life and Death of a Minke Whale in the Amazon: Dispatches from the Brazilian Rainforest" by Fábio Zuker.

A riveting, detailed account of how the author left the evangelical community and became an international symbol of awareness and resistance.

We Will Be Jaguars is a memoir and call to arms from Nemonte Nenquimo - TIME magazine’s Earth Award.
Nenequimo is a Waorani tribe member in the Ecuadorian rainforest. Yes, one of the last places contacted by "modern man." Her story of her upbringing and education and her return to protect her tribe and become a leader in climate change activism is a story all should read. Amazon Frontlines, her organization is trying to get the message across - now is the time to make changes for all of us on Earth!

This is a story that can be shared in bookclubs and in schools! #wewillbejaguars #nomontenenquimo
#abrams #abramspress

My favorite nonfiction reads are those that blow the doors open wide for me on any people or a corner of the world that I've previously been unfamiliar with, or at least not familiar with to any sizable extent. So, of course I enjoyed the new memoir from indigenous activist Nemonte Nenquimo. Not only did I have the genuine privilege of reading her own personal story, but I also was given the opportunity to be introduced to some of the challenges that she and the Waorani Nation as a whole have faced against oil companies, missionaries, and other exploitative forces, to learn about the successful resistance that she has helped lead as a member of an alliance of native nations and their supporters, and also to get my very first glimpse into the lives and cultures of some of the indigenous nations in the headwaters of the Amazon.

"We Will be Jaguars" is the kind of book that I consider a compact and much-appreciated mini-education - and it's also very much the kind of book that I would love to have up in the shelves of my library.

I really loved this memoir. I loved learning about the culture of Memonte and the community they are apart of. I loved hearing their stories and seeing how they have fought to keep their culture alive and protect their home. It was a great memoir