Bookish Thursday - Soil - The Story of a Black Mother's Garden by Camille T. Dungy

When I first saw Soil-The Story of A Black Mother's Garden by Camille T. Dungy was coming out, I pre-ordered it. I love reading about other people's gardens. Being a white, female gardener, I was interested in reading about gardening from another point of view. The book arrived a week ago, Tuesday and I immediately started reading it. Then I had to set it down to go find a pencil so I could mark passage after passage. 

The book starts with Dungy's moving to Fort Collins, Colorado and then deciding to turn large sections of her yard into a 'prairie garden', planting native plants to benefit pollinators and wildlife. And then the topics expand further as she carries you through the process of making this garden and how it ties into her everyday life. 

First she brings up the fact most 'nature' or 'environmental' writing is done by white males, such as Muir and Thoreau, who gained a lot of fame from their writing. However, nowhere in the books are things discussed like who does their laundry or the issues of doing their own laundry. Dungy talks about how, as women, we have to choose being 'doing the thing (writing)' and fixing dinner, minding the children, and the countless other things which are considered under the umbrella of women's work. In reading these books, Dungy states, 

"The authors' inability to see me means that I have trouble picturing myself in the worlds they depict. But I do exist. Instead of accepting erasure, I learn to write a story for myself."

Written during the pandemic, Dungy was given a fellowship right before lockdown started, to write this book. Instead of having time to sit and write, she was now in charge of her 10-year-old daughter's schooling on a daily basis. 

From there, she is talks about the different plants she wanted in her new garden areas, topics of segregation, how you prepare for a wildfire, Mary Cassatt, and many other topics and how they relate to her garden. So much in this book made me realize how little I actually knew about topics such as the history of segregation. 

And while there are things as a white female I will not experience that a black female would, we do share so much in common. We both don't garden with gloves. We have to put actual skin to dirt in our gardens. She wants to bring wildlife to her garden - same here. The choices of caring for family versus caring for self. 

I could go on for hours about how moving and thought-provoking this book is. And that I would love to sit in a garden and talk to Dungy about her garden and topics raised in SOIL. So I will say...

READ THIS BOOK!