Melissa Rochelle

“Public libraries seem to me a powerful example of the way that gift economies can coexist with market economies, at a larger scale. . . To me, they embody the civic-scale practice of a gift economy and the notion of common property. Libraries are models of gift economies, providing free access not only to books but also music, tools, seeds, and more. We don't each. have to own everything. The books at the library belong to everyone, serving the public with free books. . . Take the books, enjoy them, bring them back so someone else can enjoy them, with literary abundance for all. And all you need is a library card, which is a kind of agreement to respect and take care of the common good.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World

“Recognizing “enoughness” is a radical act in an economy that is always urging us to consume more.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World

“Some powerful feminist thinkers call us to remember that gift giving is among the most primal of human relationships. Each of us begins our life as the recipient in what Genevieve Vaughan has called a “maternal gift economy,” the flow of “goods and services” from mother to newborn. When the mother nurses her child, the boundary of the individual self becomes permeable and the common good is the only one that matters. The maternal gift economy is a biological imperative. There is no meritocracy or earning of sustenance. Mothers do not sell their milk to their babies, it is pure gift, so that life can continue. The currency of this economy is the flow of gratitude, the flow of love, literally in support of life. By analogy, can the sustenance from the breast of Mother Earth be understood as a maternal gift economy? These feminist thinkers argue that giving and taking in this sense are a fundamental way of caring for each other, without the intervention of states or markets. Scholars like Miki Kashtan are exploring how the philosophy and practice of a maternal gift economy might move social organization toward justice and sustainability. If the Sun is the source of flow in the economy of nature, what is the “Sun” of a human gift economy, the source that constantly replenishes the flow of gifts? Maybe it is love.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World

“There had been so many MoFo ladies—the librarian, the lawyer, the gastromancer who conversed with dead people via tummy rumbles, the psychic we underestimated (she’d told Big Jim that the human population was about to be wiped out, which had really killed the vibe of mini golf), the bodybuilder, the one who wouldn’t let me steal her earrings, the pet oncologist, the one from Zimbabwe, the one with six children, the one with dead mice in her pockets (Detective Turd eked them out, and she had to come clean about being an Indian python mom). These strange species of MoFo blew in and out of our lives like empty Cheeto® bags.”
― Kira Jane Buxton, Feral Creatures