Lessons in Living Alongside Monsters: Reading Soil by Camille T. Dungy
I am horrified by the circumstances that have forced Dungy to develop this skillset of thriving under and in spite of the crush and fear of our culture. But I am deeply grateful that she chose to share it with the world. This is the kind writing– the kind of leadership–that we desperately need.
This month's New Moon reading report is a bit late, courtesy of Alaska summer. I've been out playing with plants and fishing and soaking up the sun. As much as I love you, my readers–as much as I enjoy this newsletter–Sun-days are holy to me. But now it is raining, and I'm back in Anchorage, so here is your report. I hope the new moon brings you new insights that grow in your heart over the next few weeks.
I wake up to news each day that feels unthinkable, unimaginable. The atrocities in Gaza, the dismantling of what I used to take for granted as normal government in my country, people being kidnapped off the street by masked, armed government enforcers. On one hand, it is a shock to my system, body and soul. On the other hand, as I learn more about the people who have had to struggle against and within our dominant and dominating culture for centuries, I realize that none of it is new. What is new is that oppression is not as well-cloaked as it used to be. What is new is that I am open to seeing it. What is new is that I am more in danger from it than I used to be (although certainly still not in as much danger as far too many people are).
Seeing the world differently requires a different skillset, a different mode of being in and around others. It requires a sense of self that isn't molded by a culture that would eat me alive in a heartbeat. I have to learn to live– even thrive–alongside monsters.* I'm learning to create an internal wholeness that I can rely on to warm me like a fire in any circumstance, a sense of belonging in the world that doesn't require validation from dominant cultural norms.
So much of that deep belonging and feeling of the rightness of the world comes from my connection with the more-than-human-world. But sometimes that feels a little.... weird and ephemeral. A voice in my head tells me, "It's one thing to talk with plants (I mean, that's bad enough) but to get your sense of self and wholeness from them? Well... really, Amy?" In those moments, I find books invaluable. Specifically, books written by folks who have lived under the heel and on the margins of our dominant culture for generations, books like Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden by Camille T. Dungy.
I am so grateful for this book and for Dungy. I struggle with the contradictions I experience in this moment–the tremendous abundance and freedom of the natural world contrasted with the brutality and poverty of our culture. The internal freedom I'm finding contrasted with the crush of culture against it. Dungy has held those contradictions for decades, with generations of experience behind her. She handles them with grace and beauty, even joy.
She writes from the perspective of a black mother, gardener, and nature lover. For her, all of those identities are wound together so tightly, they are indispensable to her writing. Early in the book, she addresses how she is outside the tradition of English-speaking nature writers. The genre is known for people who wander alone in the woods and wax romantic about their encounters. But, as Dungy says, "I can't dig in my garden–my two tenths of an acre of some homesteader's 160–without digging up all this old dirt. Manifest destiny, settler colonialism, complications, and complicity." Nature is not separate from us. We are not separate from nature. That is both a blessing and a responsibility that Dungy grapples with throughout the book.
Her cultural commentary is deeply personal. When she writes about how she cannot separate her interaction with nature from personal and cultural circumstances, it is from the perspective of a mother trying to garden and write a book about it who unexpectedly finds herself responsible for her daughter's schooling during the Covid lockdowns in 2020. Even the gardening itself isn't immune from social forces. She tells several stories about racist neighbors leveraging the power of HOAs and city ordinances to discourage black gardeners.
The threads of fear are woven throughout the narrative. She tells a family story about a house being set on fire because they were unwelcome in a neighborhood. She shares her fears for her husband as he rides his bike past a white supremacist church every week, fears so immediate and visceral that she tracks his every move on his rides, even his heart rate.
But the threads of joy are as much a part of the pattern as fear. I listened to the audiobook, and one of my favorite parts was Dungy and her daughter singing a song her daughter made up for the recording. Her loving–but unflinchingly realistic–descriptions of the plants and her efforts to work with them to create a beautiful natural space are inspiring. Reading them strengthens my own connection to the beings I love.
I am wary of making what these writers have to say about my personal development. Or turning stories about horrific things that happened to other folks into stories about me grappling with fear even while I still live a very comfortable, free life. However, I believe a more peaceful world requires those of us who have benefited from the dominant culture to grow and change. Part of that growth and change is learning to keep our sense of ourselves intact when the news cycle would send us into a mental and emotional tailspin. I am obligated by my humanity to do what is in my power to free people in worse circumstances than my own. But to do that effectively, I must also strengthen my own mental and emotional resilience.
Dungy wrote, “I dig up a lot of awful history when I kneel in my garden, but, my God, a lot of beauty grows out of this soil as well.” I am horrified by the circumstances that have forced Dungy to develop this skillset of thriving under and in spite of the crush and fear of our culture. But I am deeply grateful that she chose to share it with the world. This is the kind writing– the kind of leadership–that we desperately need.
*When I say monsters, I'm not necessarily talking about people. There are certainly individuals who fit the bill. But I'm talking about the creatures we build that are the sum total of our actions as a culture, as a community. People often talk about oppressive systems, but when I think of a "system," I think of something that was built deliberately and with intent. Like a business, or some other organization. We have plenty of problematic businesses and organizations, to be sure. And the situation we find ourselves in is not an accident–plenty of people knowingly and intentionally brought us to this point. But it is more than that–the monsters are the creation of our shared assumptions, the beliefs we agree to without even speaking about them. Our collective energy has power that our culture doesn't even have words for. I come from a tradition of angels and demons, and these monsters remind me of demons–powerful forces acting invisibly, influencing our hearts, our everyday actions. Is there anything more like one of the old gods?
I call myself an “everyday mystic” because I’ve found that our dominant, human-centered culture is so pervasive, it can take the perspective of a mystic to pierce it. I looked for meaning around me using a spiritual perspective, and I found deeper connection in a hidden world that is more natural than it is supernatural. The purpose so many of us long for is all around us if we choose to look for it. All it takes is a willingness to step outside of the default American perspective, one moment at a time.
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