The UC Botanical Garden is pleased to partner with the Berkeley Public Library for a free author event in the Redwood Grove amphitheater.
Event is free, but registration is required to keep track of numbers.
Register:
https://botanicalgarden.berkeley.edu/event/free-author-event-soil-by-camille-dungy/
The Berkeley Public Library hosts Camille T. Dungy to discuss her book Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden along with authors and environmental justice activists Ashia Ajani and Aniya Butler of Youth Vs. Apocalypse. The discussion will be followed by a book signing.
Admission to the rest of the UC Botanical Garden collections is not included in the free event. You can pre-purchase admission or buy admission after the event, to enjoy the rest of the beautiful 34-acre living museum of plants.
About the Book
In Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden, 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.
-Simon & Schuster, May 2, 2023
About the Authors & Speakers
Camille T. Dungy was born and raised in the western United States (Colorado and California), though she has lived briefly in most other regions of the U.S. and has spent time on all but one continent and several countries. Dungy attributes some of the energy in her writing to both her delight in going new places and meeting new people and the good fortune of having a beautiful place to root down and call home. In much of her writing, Dungy considers history, landscape, culture, family, and desire.
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Ashia Ajani is a storyteller and environmental educator born and raised in Denver, CO, unceded territory of the Arapahoe, Cheyenne and Ute peoples. Writing as a queer Black femme, Ashia works to preserve, interrogate and imagine how the Black diaspora has shaped and continues to shape land stewardship in the Western hemisphere. They are currently the interim executive director of Youth Vs. Apocalypse.
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Aniya Butler is a spoken word poet, published author, and the cultural and relational strategist with Youth Vs. Apocalypse (YVA) from Oakland, California. Within YVA, she leads the Hip Hop & Climate Justice Team, writing workshops, and organizes community events that mobilizes youth throughout the Bay Area to learn creative writing skills and use their creative writing skills to target power holders and demand action. Through her poetry and organizing, she demands immediate and radical action to dismantle the foundational systems of oppression that are responsible for the climate crisis. Aniya believes through unity, resistance, and creativity we can rebuild a world where every living thing is allowed to thrive.
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Youth Vs. Apocalypse is an organization that brings together ‘a diverse group of young climate justice activists working together to lift the voices of youth, in particular youth of color and working class youth. Our collective action aims to fight for a livable climate and an equitable, sustainable, and just world.’
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