 Trace: Memory, History, Race and the American Landscape
By Lauret Savoy Savoy offers her readers a glimpse of how it is to exist outside of the binary of Black or White in the United States. She has captured the difficulty of that meaning-making on the page and suggested brilliant and revitalizing approaches to United Statesian history, as indicated in the following passage: “A wiser measure of the ecological footprint would include people, or at least their labor. It might factor in the losses of relationships with land or home, losses of self-determination, and losses of health or life. What if the footprint measured, over time, on whom and what the nation’s foot has trod—that is, who has paid for prosperity?” (43). Ultimately, she invites us to consider our own inner landscapes and the ways that skin color so often affects history and identity in relation to place. Are you reading our book club suggestions and interested in continuing the dialogue? Get in touch with gail@thekaleidoscapes.org! And stay tuned for an upcoming project about The Kaleidoscapes’ interpretation of traces during the pandemic as we move towards Stage 3 of re-opening in many states.
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Black Faces, White Spaces
Carolyn Finney Written by Emilie Winter, Community Engagement Coordinator of The Kaleidoscapes I first came across Carolyn Finney's book Black Faces, White Spaces in my last year of college, while I worked on my senior thesis. My thesis was about the racialization of outdoor spaces. I drew so much from Finney's work, as I attempted to better understand the relationships of race and nature as well as race and recreation in the U.S and Brazil. This particular book revealed that the nature of these very relationships is a complex one, both historical and geographically contingent. I approached this body of work as a white Brazilian woman, who resides in and has traveled throughout the United States. The differences between these two nations could not be more distinct, a point that was driven home during a recent family visit to Telluride, Colorado. I was visiting family there one summer, and I quickly realized that this resort mountain town was overwhelmingly white. People of color were almost entirely absent in the shops, on the streets or on the ski slopes. I asked my aunt – a 45-year-old white woman who has lived there for 25 years- why that was the case. Her response to me was: “well Emilie, Black people don’t like mountains”. Black. People. Don’t. Like. Mountains…? Not only was this statement completely apolitical and ahistorical, but also I knew from my own experiences that this statement was simply not true. How did such a false perception like my aunt's become a dominant narrative that seems to be ingrained in the minds of white America? In this book, Finney explores why and how Black communities are so underrepresented when it comes to interest in nature, outdoor recreation, and environmentalism. Finney states that the “stories of environmental experiences for many African Americans are often explicitly embedded in the larger historical context in which they took place” (p. 62). I recommend this book to those who want to persist in unfolding this larger context, those who want to challenge distorted notions of systemic racism in outdoor spaces. Finney provides the reader with a kind of knowledge that too often goes unheard -- her writing is inviting and provocative at the same time. She cleverly uses language that is accessible to non-academia folks, while also challenging and shifting paradigms so many of us hold with racial identity and its relationship with the Great Outdoors.  This book is a must-read. Finney artfully employs anecdotes to educate and stretch her readers. She is clear and concise about the reasons why “the great outdoors” are not perceived as universally great for everyone, particularly Black folks in the USA. She is generous with her family’s story, recognizing that most academic writing only values a certain kind of knowledge production. Along with her expertise in geography, she values references to cultural spaces “where African Americans have been able to produce and disseminate information about themselves, by themselves” (129). Her book convicts The Kaleidoscapes to engage with ongoing anti-racism work, representation, and intentional inclusion to ensure that all people feel that they belong in nature. We each inherit complex histories and relationships to the land, and Finney helps us understand how to reconcile with our own legacy.
Find a local, Black-owned bookstore and give this book a read! Here is a list of Black bookstores by state with online orders. |
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The Kaleidoscapes is an eco-theatre company dedicated to performing accessible storytelling and facilitating experiential learning in nontraditional spaces with those most affected by the climate crisis. |
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