The Colors of Nature: Culture, Identity, and the Natural World - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1571313192 ISBN 13: 9781571313195

Publisher: Milkweed Editions, 2011

Synopsis

From African American to Asian American, indigenous to immigrant, "multiracial" to "mixedblood," the diversity of cultures in this world is matched only by the diversity of stories explaining our cultural origins: stories of creation and destruction, displacement and heartbreak, hope and mystery. With writing from Jamaica Kincaid on the fallacies of national myths, Yusef Komunyakaa connecting the toxic legacy of his hometown, Bogalusa, LA, to a blind faith in capitalism, and bell hooks relating the quashing of multiculturalism to the destruction of nature that is considered "unpredictable" — amongst more than 35 other examinations of the relationship between culture and nature — this collection points toward the trouble of ignoring our cultural heritage, but also reveals how opening our eyes and our minds might provide a more livable future. The Colors of Nature comes in four alternating-color covers: red, yellow, green, and blue.

About this title

From Booklist

Our perception of nature is a cultural construct formed in part by nature writing, which has long been dominated by Euro-American voices. The exclusion of writings by people of color about place, nature's wonders, and our species' uncanny ability to wreak havoc on the natural world has skewed and limited the genre, and cheated society out of a fuller understanding of the connection between social injustice and environmental destruction. Coeditors Deming, a poet and nature writer, and Savoy, a geologist, begin to remedy this omission with their unprecedented and invaluable collection of forthright and bracing essays by writers of "diverse cultural origins and disciplinary backgrounds." Jamaica Kincaid and Francisco X. Alarcon write about nature and imperialism in the "New" World. American Indian writer Joseph Bruchac writes about owls, turkeys, turtles, and protecting his ancestors' burial grounds from developers. Memories of her Kentucky hill childhood inspire bell hooks to portray nature-wise "country black folks," while poets and scientists ardently and knowledgeably discuss everything from parrots to ethnobotany, and environmental racism. A salient contribution to the increasingly important nature-writing canon. Donna Seaman
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About this edition

• Publisher: Milkweed Editions
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1571313192
• ISBN 13: 9781571313195
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 368
• Editor: Deming Alison Hawthorne, Savoy Lauret E.