The Millions Great Fall 2025 Preview Governing Bodies is on this list.
Governing Bodies is featured in Publishers Weekly Fall 2025 Nonfiction Preview.
“[An] evocative and whip-smart memoir . . . Governing Bodies provides a crucial voice in a time of increasing peril.”—Booklist, starred review
“Iyer traces her passion for conservation and animal rights activism back two generations in this beautiful debut memoir. . . .This singular personal history edifies as much as it charms.”—Publishers Weekly
“VERDICT Highly recommended for readers seeking excellence in creative writing.”—Library Journal
Full Stop Magazine has this thoughtful review by Samara Skolnik who treated my work with such care.
“One of the book’s strengths is how it carefully recounts exposure to ideas that accumulate into belief and eventually into action”
“..it is clear that Iyer is not in the business of using animals to serve human needs, even on the page. Instead, she is equating the oppression of animal bodies to the oppression of human ones. We are not the only ones who feel, or who desire to be free. Iyer, in her sprawling consideration of her experiences and influences, urges us to believe that if there is something singular about us, it is not so much that we are human, but that we can choose to be humane.”