
Soil
The Story of a Black Mother's Garden
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Narrated by:
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Camille T. Dungy
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By:
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Camille T. Dungy
About this listen
A “heartfelt and thoroughly enriching” (Aimee Nezhukumatathil, New York Times bestselling author of World of Wonders) work that expands on how we talk about the natural world and the environment as National Book Critics Circle finalist Camille T. Dungy diversifies her garden to reflect her heritage.
In Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden poet and scholar Camille T. Dungy recounts the seven-year odyssey to diversify her garden in the predominantly white community of Fort Collins, Colorado. When she moved there in 2013, with her husband and daughter, the community held strict restrictions about what residents could and could not plant in their gardens.
In resistance to the homogenous policies that limited the possibility and wonder that grows from the earth, Dungy employs the various plants, herbs, vegetables, and flowers she grows in her garden as metaphor and treatise for how homogeneity threatens the future of our planet, and why cultivating diverse and intersectional language in our national discourse about the environment is the best means of protecting it.
“Brilliant and beautiful” (Ross Gay, New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Delights), Soil functions as the nexus of nature writing, environmental justice, and prose to encourage you to recognize the relationship between the people of the African diaspora and the land on which they live, and to understand that wherever soil rests beneath their feet is home.
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Fascinating and relevant
- By Valerie Loo on 03-04-23
By: Adam Alexander, and others
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Black Earth Wisdom
- Soulful Conversations with Black Environmentalists
- By: Leah Penniman
- Narrated by: Karen Chilton, Janina Edwards, Bill Andrew Quinn, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Author of Farming While Black and co-founder of Soul Fire Farm, Leah Penniman reminds us that ecological humility is an intrinsic part of Black cultural heritage. While racial capitalism has attempted to sever our connection to the sacred earth for 400 years, Black people have long seen the land and water as family and treating the Earth as a home essential.
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Earth W I S D O M… are We Listenin’?
- By Live 4 Love on 07-10-23
By: Leah Penniman
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Dirt to Soil
- One Family’s Journey into Regenerative Agriculture
- By: Gabe Brown
- Narrated by: Gabe Brown
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In Dirt to Soil, Gabe Brown tells the story of his ranch's amazing journey and offers a wealth of innovative solutions to our most pressing and complex contemporary agricultural challenge - restoring the soil. The Brown’s Ranch model, developed over 20 years of experimentation and refinement, focuses on regenerating resources by continuously enhancing the living biology in the soil.
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loved it.
- By Amazon Customer on 01-29-19
By: Gabe Brown
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What We Sow
- On the Personal, Ecological, and Cultural Significance of Seeds
- By: Jennifer Jewell
- Narrated by: Jennifer Jewell
- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Jennifer Jewell brings listeners on an insightful year-long journey exploring the outsize impact one of nature's smallest manifestations—the simple seed. She examines our skewed notions where "organic" seeds are grown and sourced, reveals how giant multinational agribusiness has refined and patented the genomes of seeds we rely on for staples like corn and soy, and highlights the efforts of activists working to regain legal access to heirloom seeds that were stolen from Indigenous peoples and people of color.
By: Jennifer Jewell
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Body Work
- The Radical Power of Personal Narrative
- By: Melissa Febos
- Narrated by: Melissa Febos
- Length: 3 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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In this bold and exhilarating mix of memoir and master class, Melissa Febos tackles the emotional, psychological, and physical work of writing intimately while offering an utterly fresh examination of the storyteller's life and the questions which run through it.
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A must!!!
- By Karen S on 02-13-23
By: Melissa Febos
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Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
- By: Annie Dillard
- Narrated by: Nan McNamara
- Length: 10 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is the story of a dramatic year in Virginia's Roanoke Valley, where Annie Dillard set out to chronicle incidents of "beauty tangled in a rapture with violence." Dillard's personal narrative highlights one year's exploration on foot in the Virginia region through which Tinker Creek runs. In the summer, she stalks muskrats in the creek and contemplates wave mechanics; in the fall, she watches a monarch butterfly migration and dreams of Arctic caribou. She tries to con a coot; she collects pond water and examines it under a microscope.
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It's a Classic for a Reason
- By MWS on 02-20-25
By: Annie Dillard
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Better Living Through Birding
- Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World
- By: Christian Cooper
- Narrated by: Christian Cooper
- Length: 10 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Christian Cooper is a self-described “Blerd” (Black nerd), an avid comics fan and expert birder who devotes every spring to gazing upon the migratory birds that stop to rest in Central Park, just a subway ride away from where he lives in New York City. While in the park one morning in May 2020, Cooper was engaged in the birdwatching ritual that had been a part of his life since he was ten years old when what might have been a routine encounter with a dog walker exploded age-oldracial tensions. Cooper’s viral video of the incident would send shock waves through the nation.
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If you’re not a birder yet, you soon will be.
- By Anonymous on 06-19-23
By: Christian Cooper
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Gathering Moss
- A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses
- By: Robin Wall Kimmerer
- Narrated by: Robin Wall Kimmerer
- Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Living at the limits of our ordinary perception, mosses are a common but largely unnoticed element of the natural world. Gathering Moss is a beautifully written mix of science and personal reflection that invites listeners to explore and learn from the elegantly simple lives of mosses.
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Soul Stirring
- By KatieBourgeois on 02-23-19
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Seven Days in June
- By: Tia Williams
- Narrated by: Mela Lee
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Eva Mercy is a single mom and bestselling erotica writer who is feeling pressed from all sides. Shane Hall is a reclusive, enigmatic, award‑winning novelist, who, to everyone's surprise, shows up in New York. When Shane and Eva meet unexpectedly at a literary event, sparks fly, raising not only their buried traumas, but the eyebrows of the Black literati. What no one knows is that 15 years earlier, teenage Eva and Shane spent one crazy, torrid week madly in love.
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Better than the Reviews Say
- By Akuba on 09-26-21
By: Tia Williams
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Braiding Sweetgrass
- Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
- By: Robin Wall Kimmerer
- Narrated by: Robin Wall Kimmerer
- Length: 16 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science. As a Potawatomi woman, she learned from elders, family, and history that the Potawatomi, as well as a majority of other cultures indigenous to this land, consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers.
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Finally, Words
- By Donovan P Malley on 06-30-19
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Solito
- A Memoir
- By: Javier Zamora
- Narrated by: Javier Zamora
- Length: 17 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Javier Zamora’s adventure is a three-thousand-mile journey from his small town in El Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, and across the U.S. border. He will leave behind his beloved aunt and grandparents to reunite with a mother who left four years ago and a father he barely remembers. Traveling alone amid a group of strangers and a “coyote” hired to lead them to safety, Javier expects his trip to last two short weeks.
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MASTERPIECE of Poetic Prose, Outstanding Narration
- By Mary Burnight on 01-12-23
By: Javier Zamora
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The Serviceberry
- By: Robin Wall Kimmerer
- Narrated by: Robin Wall Kimmerer
- Length: 1 hr and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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As Indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from Indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love. Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity.
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Engaging and optimistic
- By Steve on 12-18-24
What listeners say about Soil
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- Elizabeth Neubig
- 07-28-24
Sowing seeds of beauty and racial justice
I love this book! Her writing is colorful, thoughtful, and beautiful. I love that she mentioned books I have read like Braiding Sweetgrass, and areas I have seen! I love that she includes her child in the story and the many animals and plants in her yard. It makes a wonder soil in which to hopefully bury her despair and plant her seeds of hope for racial justice!
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- Jenny
- 11-24-23
What a beautiful story.
The author beautifully weaves together her story to “our” story, the past the present and the future and makes me want to tend to my garden and my story.
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- David
- 11-23-24
For every human to read
Connecting everyday life to the garden. Dungy wrote for all living beings who cultivate the land and for those who adore the land.
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- Amazon Customer
- 06-01-23
I was sad when it was over
Fantastic book and very well read by the author. I liked the bits of both environmental facts and black history sprinkled throughout since I am my white, maniacal gardener and mother-in-law to a black daughter-in-law.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Thomas
- 12-17-23
Her growing knowledge of gardening for wildlfe
Both poignant for her life and ancestral history as a Black American and learning to garden in Northern Colorado.
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- Amazon Customer
- 08-09-24
Beautifully Written and Read!
This book intertwines life and its struggles with the truths the author discovers in her gardening and working in her yard. Although this book is prose, the author's use of words rings poetic in my ears. Listening to this book challenges me in my own gardening and life. I highly recommend it.
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- Cindy F
- 03-26-24
How 1 part of her life ties to another part.
I very much enjoyed learning the back storys of various things and how they intersect with others across time and space
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- Anonymous User
- 06-04-24
So good!
Gorgeous intersectional rendering of nature and our place within it. Intrepid yet accessible; lyrical and well researched. I could listen to Camille Dungy read all day every day!
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- Amazon Customer
- 05-27-23
Loved by a person that nurtures nature
loved it! I gardened while I listened. Rich, deep, and thought provoking. I highly recommend!
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- Hilary Shames
- 06-13-23
Finding Your Voice
I Love how You (C.Dungy) turn your Anger into Love.
I am working on it, sometimes I feel like I’m barricaded inside the “Dot Room” and your voice is giving me strength to go outside and stand up for my pollinator (PSE certified) and NWF garden even when I get sited by Ambridge Boro.
I have been sited by the boro constantly and the fine is a few grand a day. This is a poverty stricken community and it creates a lot of hate in our neighborhood.
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