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Start giftingSoil
The Story of a Black Mother's Garden
Narrator
Camille T Dungy
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Length
10 hours 16 minutes
Language
English
Bookseller recommendation
“'History is perennial', Dungy writes as she muses on her decision to withhold the death of a beloved garden bunny from her young daughter while choosing to discuss another police murder of an unarmed Black person. Part nature writing, part exploration of the African diaspora and Black identity, part memoir, Dungy puts herself in conversation with all the white nature writers who've come before - Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson - and exposes how a monoculture in both cultivars and cultural backgrounds threatens us and the future of our planet. She argues diverse, intersectional discourse is our best means of achieving true environmental justice. With beautiful, incisive prose, this is one of my favorite books of the year so far. The author herself narrates the book and her personality shines in the reading. There are also moments where she sings little songs with her young daughter - an utterly charming audio-only experience.”
— Mariah • Dog-Eared Books
Bookseller recommendation
“Part nature writing, part exploration of the African diaspora and Black identity, part memoir, Dungy puts herself in conversation with all the white nature writers who've come before - Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson - and exposes how a monoculture in both cultivars and cultural backgrounds threatens us and the future of our planet. She argues diverse, intersectional discourse is our best means of achieving true environmental justice. With beautiful, incisive prose, this is one of my favorite books of the year so far. The author herself narrates the book and her personality shines in the reading. There are also moments where she sings little songs with her young daughter - an utterly charming audio-only experience.”
— Mariah • Dog-Eared Books
Bookseller recommendation
“A smart, beautiful, wide-ranging book about the author’s garden and her world. Observed with a poet’s eye and deeply concerned with social justice, history, and community. Even if you don’t think you’re interested in gardening, this book will draw you in and change how you look at the world around you. ”
— Robin • Books & Books @ The Studios of Key West
A seminal work that expands how we talk about the natural world and the environment as National Book Critics Circle Criticism finalist Camille T. Dungy diversifies her garden to reflect her heritage.
In Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden, poet and scholar Camille T. Dungy recounts the seven-year odyssey to diversify her garden in the predominately white community of Fort Collins, Colorado. When she moved there in 2013, with her husband and daughter, the community held strict restrictions about what residents could and could not plant in their gardens.
In resistance to the homogenous policies that limited the possibility and wonder that grows from the earth, Dungy employs the various plants, herbs, vegetables, and flowers she grows in her garden as metaphor and treatise for how homogeneity threatens the future of our planet, and why cultivating diverse and intersectional language in our national discourse about the environment is the best means of protecting it.
Definitive and singular, Soil functions at the nexus of nature writing, environmental justice, and prose to encourage you to recognize the relationship between the peoples of the African diaspora and the land on which they live, and to understand that wherever soil rests beneath their feet is home.
Camille T. Dungy is the author of the essay collection Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has edited three anthologies, including Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry. Her honors include the 2021 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an American Book Award. She is a University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University.
Camille T. Dungy is the author of the essay collection Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has edited three anthologies, including Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry. Her honors include the 2021 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an American Book Award. She is a University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University.
