Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden

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 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 show more 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

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.

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 show more 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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This is beautifully written, weaving the natural world and biodiversity in a garden with racial diversity and racial justice in our lives. While both are topics I care deeply about, I wish they were tied together more gracefully here. I was also surprised when this was about the author's garden, rather than her mother's garden, but that was just my misunderstanding of the subtitle.

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 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 show more 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

TW/CW: Racism, murder, police brutality, natural disasters, death

RATING: 4/5

REVIEW: I received a free copy of this book from Edelweiss Books and Simon & Schuster and am voluntarily writing an honest review.

Soil is a memoir, the story of a Black poet and mother who works to transform her Colorado lawn into a natural, diversified place that matches and strengthens the natural landscape around it. This garden becomes a metaphor for her life and history as she relates her garden, ecology and nature to the political and sociological realities of Black people, women, and mothers.

This is a beautiful story. Although I’m not an expert on plants or flowers, you don’t have to be to enjoy this book. Dungy’s writing is beautiful and often show more poetic (not a surprise since the author is a poet), and her talent with words causes her stories to hit deeper than they otherwise might. There is a great deal of sadness in this book, but there is also a great deal of beauty.

The one thing that bothered me about this book is that there were parts where it didn’t really seem to flow. It was kind of choppy in places and would drift back and forth from one topic to another without much of a segue. This isn’t something that makes me dislike this book – not at all – but I think it could have been even more powerful and beautiful if it was a little more organized.

As a whole, I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone interested in gardening, Black voices, and/or ecology. show less

A great book.
It encompasses not only the challenges of being a gardener in an suburban area but being a black gardener in white America. She includes a lot of history of her family in particular and more general descriptions of racism in America. Thoughtful, wide ranging read.

nonfiction/memoir - poet/writer/professor/mother undertakes a project to turn her Colorado yard into an oasis for native plants and animals while also educating and raising her young daughter during the COVID2019 pandemic, contemplating the complex history and state of the nation we live in now (ecologically and sociopolitically disastrous in many ways), and sowing hope in the beauty and resilience of her garden's plants and the wildlife it supports. (TW: enormous wildfires, details of Elijah McClain's death and other murdered Black lives -- recommended reading despite unpleasantness unless it is too triggering for your health)

I need to read this again (and buy my own copy), to spend the time to really take in the author's words. I show more thought at first I might enjoy it more as an audio (the beginning/middle has a meditative effect) but also think I need to devote fuller attention.

Thank you for writing/publishing this and I hope more is coming. show less