Book Club: Savoy

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.