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Rachel Carson and the Power of Queer Love
Reading Silent Spring as an outgrowth of Rachel Carson's love with Dorothy Freeman, Maxwell argues for the power of queer love now in the fight against climate change.
There is something major missing from most accounts of Silent Spring and its impact: namely, Dorothy Freeman, with whom Rachel Carson had a love relationship for over a decade. Freeman had a summer house with her husband, Stan, on the island of Southport, Maine, where Carson settled after the success of her first bestseller, The Sea Around Us. Correspondence shows the women developing strong feelings as they connect over their shared pleasure in the rocky coast.
In this moving new book, political theorist Lida Maxwell offers close readings that suggest Carson's relationship with Freeman was central to her writing of Silent Spring―a work whose defense of vibrant nonhuman nature allowed Carson and Freeman's love to flourish and for the pair to become their most authentic selves. What Maxwell calls Carson and Freeman's "queer love" unsettled their heteronormative ideas of the good life as based in bourgeois private life, and led Carson to an increasingly critical view of capitalism and its effects on nonhuman nature and human lives alike. From these women's experience Maxwell compellingly makes the case for an alternative democratic climate politics based on learning how to tune into authentic desire. Read through this lens, Carson's work begins to look different and shows us not that the human incursion into nature is dangerous, but that a particular relationship is: the loveless using up of nature for capitalism. When Carson and Freeman correspond in excited detail about the algae, anemones, and veery thrushes of the Maine coast, they give us a glimpse of a different, more loving use of nature.
Inspired by Carson and Freeman's deep care for one another, Maxwell reveals how a form of loving available to all of us can help reshape political desire amidst contemporary environmental crises.
There is something major missing from most accounts of Silent Spring and its impact: namely, Dorothy Freeman, with whom Rachel Carson had a love relationship for over a decade. Freeman had a summer house with her husband, Stan, on the island of Southport, Maine, where Carson settled after the success of her first bestseller, The Sea Around Us. Correspondence shows the women developing strong feelings as they connect over their shared pleasure in the rocky coast.
In this moving new book, political theorist Lida Maxwell offers close readings that suggest Carson's relationship with Freeman was central to her writing of Silent Spring―a work whose defense of vibrant nonhuman nature allowed Carson and Freeman's love to flourish and for the pair to become their most authentic selves. What Maxwell calls Carson and Freeman's "queer love" unsettled their heteronormative ideas of the good life as based in bourgeois private life, and led Carson to an increasingly critical view of capitalism and its effects on nonhuman nature and human lives alike. From these women's experience Maxwell compellingly makes the case for an alternative democratic climate politics based on learning how to tune into authentic desire. Read through this lens, Carson's work begins to look different and shows us not that the human incursion into nature is dangerous, but that a particular relationship is: the loveless using up of nature for capitalism. When Carson and Freeman correspond in excited detail about the algae, anemones, and veery thrushes of the Maine coast, they give us a glimpse of a different, more loving use of nature.
Inspired by Carson and Freeman's deep care for one another, Maxwell reveals how a form of loving available to all of us can help reshape political desire amidst contemporary environmental crises.
176 pages, Hardcover
First published January 28, 2025
25 people are currently reading
543 people want to read
About the author
Lida Maxwell
6 books1 followerLida Maxwell is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Trinity College. She is the author of Public Trials: Burke, Zola, Arendt and the Politics of Lost Causes and the co-editor of Second Nature: Rethinking the Natural through Politics.
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April 19, 2025Lida Maxwell and Jenn Morea, whose new book of poetry also explores the relationship of Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman through their letters, will both be at Women and Children First bookstore in Chicago the evening of June 2th, 2025. So I thought I'd check out Maxwell's book.
March 4, 2025
I will start by saying Lida Maxwell is a supremely cool person, and a great speaker. I got to see her talk about this book live, and it was wonderful and really added to my experience. If you want to get a sense of how this book reads, I would recommend listening to the episode of KPFA’s Women’s Magazine podcast “Rachel Carson— Queer Love with Lida Maxwell”.
The “environmental politics of desire” — that’s what this book is about. And it’s a compelling argument: instead of framing climate and environmental politics in terms of fear, of what we’ll lose, Maxwell’s case is that we should advocate for what we want, for what makes life worth living on this planet. Maxwell’s other main point is that queer love — love that exists outside what is prescribed by our society (consumption-based and binary) — is the foundation of this desire-based activism. This argument resonated with me deeply, and has shifted my own perspective as an environmental professional.
The problem with this book is that the title is a misnomer. In a way, I think it would be better to read this knowing less about Rachel Carson, because ultimately the book isn’t actually about her. A small piece of Carson’s story is employed as an example for Maxwell’s larger points, versus Carson’s life being the defining narrative.
Another aspect of this book that challenged me was that it really is just straight-up political theory. There are many references to works I have not read, and academic jargon I am not familiar with. I wish more of an effort had been made to make it more accessible to the general public. After all, as Maxwell says, most of her political science students don’t know who Rachel Carson is. But there are a lot of queer folks in the environmental field, and they will be picking up this book too.
Finally, as someone who has spent a lot of time reading about Rachel Carson, some of Maxwell’s points fell flat with me, because they lacked the larger context of Carson’s life. The book seemed to indicate that Rachel and Dorothy’s relationship was the first time Rachel’s queer identity impacted her life and work, when I would argue it wasn’t. For example, Carson’s earlier books may not have been as forthrightly political, but she wrote two of them while employed by the federal government, some of which was during the period known as the ‘Lavender Scare,’ where queerness, or any other indication of nonconformity, was aggressively targeted. Rachel had a family for whom she was the sole breadwinner.
I got this book because I was hoping for an analysis of Carson’s life with a queer lens, so I left disappointed on that front. But I gained new perspectives and I think Maxwell is scratching the surface of a story that needs more attention, and for that I give it four stars.
The “environmental politics of desire” — that’s what this book is about. And it’s a compelling argument: instead of framing climate and environmental politics in terms of fear, of what we’ll lose, Maxwell’s case is that we should advocate for what we want, for what makes life worth living on this planet. Maxwell’s other main point is that queer love — love that exists outside what is prescribed by our society (consumption-based and binary) — is the foundation of this desire-based activism. This argument resonated with me deeply, and has shifted my own perspective as an environmental professional.
The problem with this book is that the title is a misnomer. In a way, I think it would be better to read this knowing less about Rachel Carson, because ultimately the book isn’t actually about her. A small piece of Carson’s story is employed as an example for Maxwell’s larger points, versus Carson’s life being the defining narrative.
Another aspect of this book that challenged me was that it really is just straight-up political theory. There are many references to works I have not read, and academic jargon I am not familiar with. I wish more of an effort had been made to make it more accessible to the general public. After all, as Maxwell says, most of her political science students don’t know who Rachel Carson is. But there are a lot of queer folks in the environmental field, and they will be picking up this book too.
Finally, as someone who has spent a lot of time reading about Rachel Carson, some of Maxwell’s points fell flat with me, because they lacked the larger context of Carson’s life. The book seemed to indicate that Rachel and Dorothy’s relationship was the first time Rachel’s queer identity impacted her life and work, when I would argue it wasn’t. For example, Carson’s earlier books may not have been as forthrightly political, but she wrote two of them while employed by the federal government, some of which was during the period known as the ‘Lavender Scare,’ where queerness, or any other indication of nonconformity, was aggressively targeted. Rachel had a family for whom she was the sole breadwinner.
I got this book because I was hoping for an analysis of Carson’s life with a queer lens, so I left disappointed on that front. But I gained new perspectives and I think Maxwell is scratching the surface of a story that needs more attention, and for that I give it four stars.
October 11, 2024
There are two main arguments in this book: 1) that Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman's queer relationship heavily influenced Carson's writing of Silent Spring and 2) that queer love is fundamentally anti-capitalist. Both are compelling and Maxwell does a good job providing evidence to bolster them. However, this is fundamentally an academic book so it's repetitive, dry, and full of jargon. It's actually worse than that—it's so repetitive that it reads like an undergrad wrote it. Introduction, argument, evidence, argument, evidence, conclusion. Even though I agree with the premise and think it's a really important argument, it was really hard to actually read the entire book. I don't think it's accessible for people outside of political science/queer studies graduate programs and that's a real shame.
July 22, 2025
Rachel Carson and the Power of Queer Love looks to the queer love relationship between Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman as a key moment that changed both of their lives. Lida Maxwell argues that the queer love between Carson and Freeman drove Carson to write Silent Spring and that Carson and Freeman's queer love can teach us how to address the challenge of climate change.
Maxwell argues that capitalism is bolstered by our heteronormative expectations of happiness and pleasure, as we turn to consumption to try and compensate for how we can never live up to the expectations capitalism sets for us. Additionally, capitalism depicts love and family life as a place of refuge while also serving to distract the masses from the politics that could provide meaningful change. This capitalism-centric popular understanding of meaning and pleasure makes fighting climate change a challenge, as we struggle to see a life of meaning outside of the capitalist system in which we already live. To combat this, Maxwell turns to Carson's works and letters with Freeman to see how queer love can provide us with alternative climate politics known as an "environmental politics of desire."
Through examining Carson and Freeman, Maxwell argues that queer love through nonhuman nature leads to newfound senses of pleasure and wonder that establish a new sense of meaning in life. This revelation allows for people to recognize what they want politically and envision a new alternative future. Maxwell also notes how queer love can create a type of loving use amongst people and nonhuman nature, in which sharing one's needs and fears, and then affirming one another's needs allows for positive growth for all parties, which can help us grow into our "true" self, leading us to feel free to wonder even more. By meeting our actual- personal- needs, both queer love and nonhuman nature allows the true self to grow. In a world without nonhuman nature, however, the true self struggles to materialize and we are forced to form a "fake" self that adopts the needs, desires, and pleasures of capitalism as our own.
Maxwell then argues that nonhuman nature's role in producing queer love's wonder and loving use allows us to better understand how nonhuman nature is key in creating a sense of pleasure and meaning. This, in turn, leads us to act politically, as we can now see how the capitalist notion of human progress via a sterile world- an ideology that tries to eradicate any natural "pest" that is deemed to be interfering with human progress- restricts future pleasure, which relies on coexisting alongside nonhuman nature in a vibrant, multi-species world. While heteronormativity depicts any changes to our current course as impossible or scary, queer love allows us to identify what is personally meaningful to us, letting us determine what we really want from the future and then demand it politically. People are freed from the feelings of shame we once bore and are able to now fight climate change on behalf of ideas that do NOT bolster the current capitalist climate regime. It is a big ask to find a world that nurtures queer love, but the pleasure that world provides makes people only more invested in the cause politically.
Overall the book is very organized. There are parts that I had to reread just to make sure I was following the thought process. Additionally, some portions of the book are worded oddly, but overall it was not a big deal. I think the ideas here are interesting, though I wish some of the ideas were a little more baked. I really admired Maxwell's section on countering the potential arguments from others that would suggest her focus on love was too frivolous a topic in the grander scheme of climate change. Finally, I kept comparing this book to Climate Leviathan by Wainwright and Mann, and I think the two books generate an interesting back-and-forth dialogue. Both examine capital's hegemony in our current climate regime and possible futures.
Maxwell argues that capitalism is bolstered by our heteronormative expectations of happiness and pleasure, as we turn to consumption to try and compensate for how we can never live up to the expectations capitalism sets for us. Additionally, capitalism depicts love and family life as a place of refuge while also serving to distract the masses from the politics that could provide meaningful change. This capitalism-centric popular understanding of meaning and pleasure makes fighting climate change a challenge, as we struggle to see a life of meaning outside of the capitalist system in which we already live. To combat this, Maxwell turns to Carson's works and letters with Freeman to see how queer love can provide us with alternative climate politics known as an "environmental politics of desire."
Through examining Carson and Freeman, Maxwell argues that queer love through nonhuman nature leads to newfound senses of pleasure and wonder that establish a new sense of meaning in life. This revelation allows for people to recognize what they want politically and envision a new alternative future. Maxwell also notes how queer love can create a type of loving use amongst people and nonhuman nature, in which sharing one's needs and fears, and then affirming one another's needs allows for positive growth for all parties, which can help us grow into our "true" self, leading us to feel free to wonder even more. By meeting our actual- personal- needs, both queer love and nonhuman nature allows the true self to grow. In a world without nonhuman nature, however, the true self struggles to materialize and we are forced to form a "fake" self that adopts the needs, desires, and pleasures of capitalism as our own.
Maxwell then argues that nonhuman nature's role in producing queer love's wonder and loving use allows us to better understand how nonhuman nature is key in creating a sense of pleasure and meaning. This, in turn, leads us to act politically, as we can now see how the capitalist notion of human progress via a sterile world- an ideology that tries to eradicate any natural "pest" that is deemed to be interfering with human progress- restricts future pleasure, which relies on coexisting alongside nonhuman nature in a vibrant, multi-species world. While heteronormativity depicts any changes to our current course as impossible or scary, queer love allows us to identify what is personally meaningful to us, letting us determine what we really want from the future and then demand it politically. People are freed from the feelings of shame we once bore and are able to now fight climate change on behalf of ideas that do NOT bolster the current capitalist climate regime. It is a big ask to find a world that nurtures queer love, but the pleasure that world provides makes people only more invested in the cause politically.
Overall the book is very organized. There are parts that I had to reread just to make sure I was following the thought process. Additionally, some portions of the book are worded oddly, but overall it was not a big deal. I think the ideas here are interesting, though I wish some of the ideas were a little more baked. I really admired Maxwell's section on countering the potential arguments from others that would suggest her focus on love was too frivolous a topic in the grander scheme of climate change. Finally, I kept comparing this book to Climate Leviathan by Wainwright and Mann, and I think the two books generate an interesting back-and-forth dialogue. Both examine capital's hegemony in our current climate regime and possible futures.
February 10, 2025
I’m the ideal audience for this book: Carson was a door to my own queer identity and love of nonhuman nature, and I agree with most of the points being made here. The writing is ragged and clumsy at times, and I’m not sure if that’s the author’s responsibility or just the style of academic rhetoric I haven’t been immersed in for a while. Either way, it came off aggressive and repetitive. I think Carson’s story and the compelling nature of it is best served by reflective narrative and open wonder—which the author points out in name only. Still glad I read it.
May 13, 2025
3.5/5
The rise of "normality discourse'," [Julian B.] Carter writes, "drew on and extended several earlier conceptual vocabularies, especially those of civilization and evolution, in a way which made it possible to talk about whiteness indirectly, in terms of the affectionate, reproductive heterosexuality of 'normal' married couples." [..L]ove discourse was veiled white supremacist discourse[.]This title drew me in like a moth to a flame, or less dramatically an ant to a spilled pool of brown sugar. It's been some time since I interacted with Carson's writing on its own terms, but the engagement had been favorable enough, and there's little I like more than backtracking to discover that, yes, that figure of my past reading/learning/living was also queer. Regarding this book, it was wonderfully refreshing to take on subjects in a more accredited and bibliographied manner than afforded by my customary intake of Tumblr posts and Bluesky links, and I'll have to do a deep dive into the notes before returning this copy to fully fit out my flotilla for the 'where do I go from here', queer knowledge gathering wise. However, the argument itself was repetitive (down to certain key highly worded phrases being trotted far more often than was necessary), as well as sat uneasily in the broader queer community during others (the emphasis on love, for example, which I know was given fair titular warning but could have at least been presented more holistically alongside discussions of aromanticism/asexuality/amatonormativity). This made for reading that was most interesting when it was defining everything that queer love was not, but when it came to pushing the conclusion home (that queer love was going to save us all), I was at most halfway convinced.
When we feel despair at economic precarity or violence or unhappy work lives, we turn to intimate life rather than to politics.Still, this is a gloriously signaling title to find on the shelves of a local public library, and it's short enough that I would hope it draws in some folks who are more on the environmental presentation side than the queer rights one (we have a lot of those where I'm at, and the intersection of such interests with wealth/clout happens more often than one might think). For a number among those souls may discover a way to move forward in these fraught times that they may have blocked themselves off from, subconsciously or otherwise, in the past few years or decades ago in childhood, from fear or just plain lack of knowledge. Me, the main thing I got from this book was the path towards promising reads, whether it's a proper Carson biography/collection of extant letters or texts such as When Did Indians Become Straight? and The Heart of Whiteness that Maxwell referenced and I added. And much as I quibbled about this text, it's nice to get something that has legitimate reason to be happy, rather than a transphobic rag trying to argue for the renaissance of going back in the closet.
I sympathize with this critique of how the intimate realm functions in contemporary life, but I think it is really an account of how heteronormative intimacy works in contemporary life.
Rather than storytelling (the practice that Hannah Arendt is necessary for politics), [Dorothy] Freeman practiced a kind of queer indexing: she could not tell the whole story, but she named the key terms in her experience. Even if she could not elucidate the meaning of these terms, she left them as guideposts for later readers to follow—both backwards into the meaning of her experience and forwards into a future still being written.
August 15, 2025
Reads exactly like a feminist studies essay at a liberal arts college. Their letters are beautiful and I agree that we need a new way of viewing love and interacting with nature, but I don’t feel confident that this essay will convince anyone who doesn’t already believe in that idea
June 15, 2025
My favorite part of this book was learning about the history between Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman. Their letters were truly stunning, and I never knew anything about Carson's life, besides associating her with the famous book "Silent Spring," which I've never read but whose name I learned for high school history classes.
I did experience a certain frustration while reading this book, however, that ultimately amounted to thinking, "I wish that Lida Maxwell had been in conversation with the aromantic community while writing this." This isn't to say that every aromantic person thinks a certain way or that we're all in agreement about certain topics. But there are quite a few terms that come up commonly in aromantic spaces that would have made all the difference in Maxwell's work.
For instance, Maxwell talks a lot about the concept of "straight love," defining it not simply as heterosexual attraction but as an unhealthy system of heteronormative expectations that claims to form "loving" relationships while in reality harming people and limiting their perception of what is possible in life. I wish that Maxwell had been familiar with Elizabeth Brake's concept of amatonormativity (first coined over a decade ago now), because I believe it more precisely describes their concept of "straight love."
If Maxwell had been in conversation with aromantic communities, starting by using the term "amatonormativity" in their discourse, then their entire thesis would have shifted in a more aromantic (and in my opinion, a more interesting) way, perhaps by changing the emphasis from the power of queer love to the power of queerness more generally.
As an aromantic person, Maxwell does discuss certain theories of love that I find fascinating, exploring how love intersects with use/usefulness and pondering if love can still be true if it has negative outcomes. While some people believe that if love is harmful, then it's not truly love, I subscribe to the loveless belief that love is not an inherently good emotion and shouldn't be put on too high a pedestal. Loving someone does not preclude the possibility of causing them harm, and it does not work in isolation apart from other emotions, such as jealousy and anger.
I also believe that, since emotions are out of our control, we shouldn't ascribe morality to them or treat other people as inhuman for not experiencing them in conventional ways. How you treat somebody is separate from how you feel about them, even though the two attitudes usually align. In the end, it is how we react and what we do that matters, not what we instinctively think or feel.
Maxwell makes some good points about how queer love (which I will edit in my head to queerness) can be a pathway to activism and how caring for others can inspire us to make the world a better place. But their analysis feels incomplete without taking into account the language and feelings of a community that means so much to me. I left their book having learned a lot about Rachel Carson but not being fully moved by their (ironically amatonormative) conclusions.
On a final note, it may be fruitless to speculate about people's sexualities, since only they can define themselves with any real authority, (and I do appreciate how Maxwell refrains from pointing any fingers and saying, "She was definitely a lesbian/bisexual/etc"!). Still, I would like to point out that a more aromantic reading of this topic would also offer up the possibility that Carson and Freeman had what we might define today as a queerplatonic relationship.
Personally, this makes the most sense to me, because of how surprised the two women seemed to be that they had such strong feelings for one another. Presumably, they knew that lesbians were a thing. But who was discussing alterous attraction and queerplatonic partnerships in the 1950s? I bristled at Maxwell's implication that their letters were clearly romantic, when there is a wider variety of human experience and emotions than most allosexual people are aware of. Carson and Freeman's relationship was queer; there is no doubt in my mind about that. But I want to see more theory that decouples queerness from love and embraces the freedom and possibilities of aromanticism and lovelessness.
I did experience a certain frustration while reading this book, however, that ultimately amounted to thinking, "I wish that Lida Maxwell had been in conversation with the aromantic community while writing this." This isn't to say that every aromantic person thinks a certain way or that we're all in agreement about certain topics. But there are quite a few terms that come up commonly in aromantic spaces that would have made all the difference in Maxwell's work.
For instance, Maxwell talks a lot about the concept of "straight love," defining it not simply as heterosexual attraction but as an unhealthy system of heteronormative expectations that claims to form "loving" relationships while in reality harming people and limiting their perception of what is possible in life. I wish that Maxwell had been familiar with Elizabeth Brake's concept of amatonormativity (first coined over a decade ago now), because I believe it more precisely describes their concept of "straight love."
If Maxwell had been in conversation with aromantic communities, starting by using the term "amatonormativity" in their discourse, then their entire thesis would have shifted in a more aromantic (and in my opinion, a more interesting) way, perhaps by changing the emphasis from the power of queer love to the power of queerness more generally.
As an aromantic person, Maxwell does discuss certain theories of love that I find fascinating, exploring how love intersects with use/usefulness and pondering if love can still be true if it has negative outcomes. While some people believe that if love is harmful, then it's not truly love, I subscribe to the loveless belief that love is not an inherently good emotion and shouldn't be put on too high a pedestal. Loving someone does not preclude the possibility of causing them harm, and it does not work in isolation apart from other emotions, such as jealousy and anger.
I also believe that, since emotions are out of our control, we shouldn't ascribe morality to them or treat other people as inhuman for not experiencing them in conventional ways. How you treat somebody is separate from how you feel about them, even though the two attitudes usually align. In the end, it is how we react and what we do that matters, not what we instinctively think or feel.
Maxwell makes some good points about how queer love (which I will edit in my head to queerness) can be a pathway to activism and how caring for others can inspire us to make the world a better place. But their analysis feels incomplete without taking into account the language and feelings of a community that means so much to me. I left their book having learned a lot about Rachel Carson but not being fully moved by their (ironically amatonormative) conclusions.
On a final note, it may be fruitless to speculate about people's sexualities, since only they can define themselves with any real authority, (and I do appreciate how Maxwell refrains from pointing any fingers and saying, "She was definitely a lesbian/bisexual/etc"!). Still, I would like to point out that a more aromantic reading of this topic would also offer up the possibility that Carson and Freeman had what we might define today as a queerplatonic relationship.
Personally, this makes the most sense to me, because of how surprised the two women seemed to be that they had such strong feelings for one another. Presumably, they knew that lesbians were a thing. But who was discussing alterous attraction and queerplatonic partnerships in the 1950s? I bristled at Maxwell's implication that their letters were clearly romantic, when there is a wider variety of human experience and emotions than most allosexual people are aware of. Carson and Freeman's relationship was queer; there is no doubt in my mind about that. But I want to see more theory that decouples queerness from love and embraces the freedom and possibilities of aromanticism and lovelessness.
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November 29, 2025I’m not going to rate this because I do think it was very interesting but I cannot retain information when I read nonfiction and it took me so long to read that I lost interest. I thought this was going to be about Rachel Carson and her love for Dorothy Freedman, not an exploration of the connection between queerness, capitalism, and the environment (which was very interesting!!), so that was the first strike lol. I’m not a nonfiction girlie at all so that was the main reason this book didn’t do much for me.
The section about Carson and Freedman’s letters on verries and thrushes nearly had me in tears. That was so precious and it warms my heart that they were able to express their love for each other
The section about Carson and Freedman’s letters on verries and thrushes nearly had me in tears. That was so precious and it warms my heart that they were able to express their love for each other
May 6, 2025
Trueeee
May 22, 2025
DNF - not a fan of this author’s writing
May 14, 2025
This just felt like Rachel Carson’s writing with brief commentary from Lida Maxwell. The commentary felt unnecessary to me. I actually stopped reading this book and decided to read Always Rachel, The Letters or Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman instead.
April 16, 2025
Wish I could 2 1/2 kinda, loved talking about it with my class though
September 9, 2025
This was more of an academic tract than I was wanting to read. I think I'll put a biography of Rachel Carson on my TBR list for the future. Maybe one cited in the notes. BTW, the notes were good reading!
Quotable:
Sharing thoughts, feelings, worldly things, nonhuman nature, and experiences with each other made sharing itself better and amplified for them both their own pleasure and sense of meaning.
If we want climate politics that will spur us to action rather than paralysis, teach us to wonder about rather than fear other ways of living, and itself feel rewarding as a practice of becoming ourselves, then we want a climate politics not based in ideologies of straight love but one that emerges out of the pedagogy of queer love.
Quotable:
Sharing thoughts, feelings, worldly things, nonhuman nature, and experiences with each other made sharing itself better and amplified for them both their own pleasure and sense of meaning.
If we want climate politics that will spur us to action rather than paralysis, teach us to wonder about rather than fear other ways of living, and itself feel rewarding as a practice of becoming ourselves, then we want a climate politics not based in ideologies of straight love but one that emerges out of the pedagogy of queer love.
May 30, 2025
i was really excited to read this book because the concept seemed really cool, but honestly at the scale/depth it is written in, it could be a 5-page essay. i think sometimes when theory was brought in rather than other examples of literature or other media, it was on the right track, but often times completely irrelevant. it does make me want to read rachel carson’s writings on the ocean though.
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May 6, 2025Fascinating premise, very academic. I think there was some effort to code switch from thesis to general public, but it didn't quite get there. I appreciated all the excerpts from the letters between Carson and Freeman though.
September 11, 2025
i cant say enough abt how good this book is! it gave words to so many thoughts/feelings ive been having and opened my eyes to new modes of thinking abt queerness, capitalism, and fighting climate change. unbelievably well done and moving!
April 21, 2025
I really wanted to love this, and it had glimmers of compelling writing and strong arguments. But it felt both half baked and overproofed. Getting through it was a slog, and I am the target audience!
May 23, 2025
A snooze. Skip it
July 15, 2025
i love looking through a queer lense. this could have been a shorter essay
November 3, 2025
This felt more like a why these two women might have been lovers from a college women's studies class paper. There wasn't any facts to back up the rumors mentioned and then skipped around talking about Southport and other queer lovers. This could have been an email.
November 22, 2025
I enjoyed the exploration of this love story however it read like a university essay in its repetitiveness and argumentative style.
August 7, 2025
Definitely academic, a bit dry, surprisingly thin on Rachel Carson content, but it contains some beautiful ideas.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews