What does it mean to "be-in-kind" with a nonhuman animal? Or in Dr. Sean Kell-Luddon's case, to be in-kind with one of the last remaining wild wolves? Using a neurological interface to translate her animal subject's perception through her own mind, Sean intends to chase both her scientific curiosity and her secret, lifelong desire to experience the intimacy and freedom of wolfishness.
Feed Them Silence raises important questions about consciousness, research ethics, corporate sponsorship, shrinking habitats, and the various ways we interact with our planetary companions, but it doesn’t suggest that there are many easy answers. It sets out to be a provocative tale, and it works.
A masterpiece of a novella ... Mandelo here weaves intricate queer appetite with a scathing, intimate exploration of the boundaries, possibilities, and failures of American academia ... Mandelo expertly braids the tangled relationships between Sean and Kate, Sean and Riya, scientist and subject, self and subject, science and nature. The parallels cut deep, the dissonance rings loud.
The work truly excels when Mandelo lets the reader wade through this interpretive murk ... Sentences throughout Feed Them Silence regularly nest these multiple sites of meaning within them. The tense dependency between every creature in the book simmers just beneath the text. And when the fractures begin finally to be perceived, it already feels too late.
