Camille T. Dungy

Dungy's book is subtitled The Story of a Black Mother's Garden and metaphorically, this parenthetical is apt. Equally as many words are devoted to the Mother as to the Garden, and though my strongest impression is of the person, I recognized my own challenges with urban gardening in Dungy's efforts to transform a residential plot from uniform sod to something closer to indigenous prairie.

So many foundational environmentally focused books, seemed to have no other people in it. The (nearly show more always white) men and women who claim to be models for how to truly experience the natural world always seemed to do so in solitude. Just one guy --so often a guy-- with no evidence of family or anyone to worry about but himself. [66]

Dungy's gardening proves an effective means of arranging her thoughts on meditation, race in community, family history, genre criticism (in this case, nature writing), and yes -- Dungy is an accomplished poet -- verse and poetic reflections. So while the word count may not reflect an overly predominant concern with gardening or nature writing, her myriad thoughts circle back to her garden, return home to her: a gardener.

I want what is inside my doors to be part of this conversation. I don't want to separate my life from other lives on the planet.
Ecological thought, conservationist thought, the thoughts of the gardener -- these should foster nurturing and collaborative relationships with other life-forms, including those we've long-called wild. This planet is home to us all. All who live in this house are family. [...] My life demands a radically domestic ecological thought. [129-30]

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Dungy separates her "essays" with her own photographs from garden and yard, and with her poetry. There are no formal chapter breaks or titles, and I came to think of these interludes as clearings, akin to spaces between flower beds, or the lane between garden rows: just enough to give a sense of margin, to walk from one area to another without harming the growing things, but not so much as to define a footpath or verge. That some of these markers were poems suggested, too, that words and images took the place of line breaks and verse forms.

Dungy designed custom illustrations, black-and-white for the front flyleaf and colour for the back, depicting her home plot before her gardening, and after.

They frighten me, these thoughts of long months when I don't have my garden to give me something to do with my hope and my hands. [287] show less

As an incredibly varied anthology of poems, this work serves up poems from familiar names alongside poets who most poetry readers won't be familiar with, and the result is a fresh collection of voices that pops with style, meaning, and memorable lines. The variations in style and voice mean that, more than likely, any one reader won't be blown away by each poem in the book, but at the same time, it's hard to imagine the reader that won't be struck by multiple pieces here, to the point of show more wanting to read them over and share them, again and again.

Among the many poets represented here, some of my all-time favorite voices are represented--including Yusef Komunyakaa, A. Van Jordan, Patricia Smith, Regie O'Hare Gibson, Aracelis Girmay, Kevin Young, and Lucille Clifton. But even as someone who reads poetry constantly, in both collections and journals, there are names here that I've never heard, and that I've discovered as new favorites who I'll be seeking out more work from. Each reader is sure to find their own favorites, and line upon line that resonates with them.

Absolutely recommended. show less

There's a lot to like about Soil: the story of a black mother's garden, written by Camille T. Dungy. While it seems simple on the surface, it is a complex interweaving stories. It's the story of the author and her husband and daughter working to replace their sod, monocultural lawn in Colorado with a diversity of drought resistant plants, including many that are native to the area.

It's also the story of the author's extended family, including the lynching of a great-great uncle because he show more had a car that was too nice and new, sending her great-great grandfather out of Louisiana except for visits to family. Her grandparent's teaching in a black school in Lynchburg, VA, where the only blacks allowed on the Randolph Macon campus were workers – cooks, cleaners, gardeners, maintenance, etc. And Camille's tenure there at, teaching at the college. Of her grandfather's brother Hugh traveling to Colorado Springs in the summers to attend what became the University of Colorado since he wasn't allowed attend college in his home state. Of her parents moving there from California, and Roy and Camille and their daughter moving there for university jobs in 2013. And it's the story of how this family, and African-Americans more generally, are treated in the past and the present, including the fear Roy and Camille felt and the harassment of African-American students on their way to class in Colorado Springs after the 2016 Presidential elections.

And it's the story of 2020, the year Dungy was planning to spend working on her poetry via a Guggenheim fellowship, which changed completely with COVID since she had a daughter whose schooling at home she needed to supervise, which led to her reflection on how much nature writing was about nature with no people and no families in it, and some of the women who are writing their families into their nature writing.

This won't be my favorite books of the year, but I wish I'd purchased this one to be able to look back at. show less

There is much inside Dungy's memoir, making in more than a simple story of turning a Colorado yard into a Prairie Garden. "Soil" is one of those books I picked up thinking it would merit a quick thumbing through. Instead, I found myself reading it slowly, carefully, finding it full of interesting and useful stories.

There is her history, her parents, grandparents, daughter, husband, and the history of Black people in America over four centuries of repression and inequality of the worst kind. show more

She tells about nature literature and environmental writing, how it has been and continues to be dominated by white, male authors who seemed to have no families, no children, and nothing else to do but wander the landscape and write about it.

It is also about her growing education about plants, animals, their interactions and their relationships with us human animals with our destructive ways. I should have paid more attention to her biological details, but still learned much from her descriptions of soil, climate and seasons.

Camille T Dungy is a poet, a memoirist, an essayist, I need to read more of.
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