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Join this book club to discuss nature-focused reads each month. You'll also learn how to become more ecologically-minded through activities and speakers designed to enhance our reading. Age 18 and up.
This month, join us to discuss Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden by author and poet Camille T. Dungy. We'll also have an optional poetry share and discussion at the beginning of the meeting. Bring a piece of nature poetry, and we can discuss how this art form connects with our book and the environment.
Summary:
"Poet and scholar Camille T. Dungy recounts the seven-year odyssey to diversify her garden in the predominantly white community of Fort Collins, Colorado. When she moved there in 2013 with her husband and daughter, the community held 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."
Please contact Maggie Hutt at mhutt@mcpl.info if you have any questions about this program.
The Downtown Library is in the heart of Downtown Bloomington, located right on Kirkwood Avenue. It provides a variety of meeting rooms, spaces for children and teens, a digital creativity center, and much more.
