Black on Earth: African American Ecoliterary Traditions

by Kimberly N. Ruffin

American environmental literature has relied heavily on the perspectives of European Americans, often ignoring other groups. In Black on Earth , Kimberly Ruffin expands the reach of ecocriticism by analyzing the ecological experiences, conceptions, and desires seen in African American writing.

Ruffin identifies a theory of “ecological burden and beauty” in which African American authors underscore the ecological burdens of living within human hierarchies in the social order just as they explore the ecological beauty of being a part of the natural order. Blacks were ecological agents before the emergence of American nature writing, argues Ruffin, and their perspectives are critical to understanding the full scope of ecological thought.

Ruffin examines African American ecological insights from the antebellum era to the twenty-first century, considering WPA slave narratives, neo–slave poetry, novels, essays, and documentary films, by such artists as Octavia Butler, Alice Walker, Henry Dumas, Percival Everett, Spike Lee, and Jayne Cortez. Identifying themes of work, slavery, religion, mythology, music, and citizenship, Black on Earth highlights the ways in which African American writers are visionary ecological artists.

Genres: Nonfiction, Education, Environment

192 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2010

Reviews

[sdw]

“If we expect people to become ecological citizens, then we must have images through which they can honor and question themselves and any forces (hierarchies of nation, race, class, sexuality, or gender) that complicate their attempts to express their ecological belonging.” – Kimberly Ruffin


Black on Earth focuses on what the author calls the burden-and-beauty paradox in a wide range of African American ecological texts. It is one of many new books to focus on African American environmental ethics outside of a conventional environmental justice framework including Kimberly K. Smith’s African American Environmental Thought and Diane Glave and Mark Stoll’s coRuffin calls llection “To Love the Wind and Rain”: African Americans and Environmental History .

The first chapter of the book challenges a framework of environmental knowledge located primarily in recreation. It shows the way enslaved peoples expressed ecological agency. The second chapter builds on this discussion through an exploration of neo-slave poetry, and specifically poetry that tries to imagine the biographies and perspectives of York, Clark’s enslaved servant, Harriet Tubman, and George Washington Carver. Chapter Three offers an engaging exploration of religion, specifically the ecotheology of Octavia Butler and Alice Walker. Walker and Butler engage the bible in strikingly distinct ways. Chapter Four looks at the literary function of myth in the writings of Percival Everett and Henry Dumas. There is a focus on geography and migration in this chapter as Everett focuses on the U.S. West and Dumas on a South-North axis. Chapter Five engages the blues epistemology with a focus on the poetry of Jayne Cortez. The conclusion examines the legacy of Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans.

[Clarreese]

Very academic like text heavy but so many great points. Had to take my time (&notes)

[Erica]

The author has taken a compelling, important theme and hidden it behind heavy academic-speak and meaningless catchphrases. While the book was too frustrating to finish, the many works mentioned give good ideas for further reading.