Rituals for Climate Change: A Crip Struggle for Ecojustice

by Naomi Ortiz

Disability justice and ecojustice rarely are spoken in the same mouthful but are in constant conversation in our world. This mixed-genre manuscript of poetry and lyrical essay doesn’t contain just one point of view but encompasses dialectical perspectives which often exist in contradiction to each other. A disabled person is in need of plastic cups and concerned about the overwhelming plastic in our ecosystems. Rituals for Climate A Crip Struggle for Ecojustice expands on and complicates who is seen as an environmentalist and what being in relationship with the land can look like. This book is an offering to explore the spiritual question of how to witness. It serves as a companion to those also grappling with the difficult and often unanswerable questions posed by climate change in the borderlands. By exploring the ways body, mind, and cultures both clash with and long for ecojustice, Rituals for Climate Change offers an often-overlooked perspective on climate-grief, interdependence, and resilience. Disabled people know how to adapt to a world that is ever changing without considering us.

Naomi Ortiz (they/she) is a poet, writer, and visual artist whose intersectional work focuses on self-care for activists, disability justice, climate action, and relationship with place. They are the author of Sustaining Self-Care for Social Justice (Reclamation Press), a nonfiction book that delves into self-care tools and strategies for diverse communities. Their poetry/prose collection, Rituals for Climate A Crip Struggle for Ecojustice (punctum books) explores how climate change impacts connection to place, expands on and complicates who is seen as an environmentalist, and reimagines relationship with the land. Ortiz is a Border Narrative Grant awardee for their multidisciplinary project “Complicating Conversations.” They are a 2022 Disability Futures Fellow and a Zoeglossia Poetry Fellow whose poems have been nominated for “Best of the Internet” and listed on Entropy’s “Best of 2020-2021: Favorite Poems Published Online.” Ortiz emphasizes interdependence, inclusion, and spiritual growth in their talks, workshops, poetry, and writing. Ortiz first performed their poetry at the 2004 Inaugural Disability Pride Parade in Chicago and has continued at events across the country. As a Disabled Mestizx living in the Arizona U.S./Mexico borderlands, they are passionate about organizing with the Southern Arizona Community Care Collective/Colectivo de Beinestar Comunitario.

Genres: Poetry, Disability, Environment

208 pages, Paperback

Published August 12, 2023

Reviews

[Clove · Rating 5 out of 5]

More poetry than prose, more questions than answers. Really spoke to so many things I’ve thought about as a disabled person of color.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interdependence is messy, and inherently inconvenient. It happens through conversation, boundary setting, sacrifice, and respect. Combining principles of Disability Justice and ecojustice, Naomi Ortiz’s RITUALS FOR CLIMATE CHANGE: A CRIP STRUGGLE FOR ECOJUSTICE explores how to witness, mourn, and love a breaking land with a disabled body. This book examines the tension of wanting to save an ecosystem while also needing plastic cups, grief at seeing the Sonoran desert slowly eroded by human hands, and the devotion needed to *be with* a place Poetry and lyric essays document interdependence as it actually is — at times heartbreaking, at times soul-filling, but always, always necessary.

[John Horgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

really moving and can't recommend it enough especially if reading mostly academic or scientific work