been siting with a discomfort for many years before writing Unearthed, a memoir looking into her Mauritian heritage as well as her journey of moving from the cit to the countryside. “I found myself consumed with questions about what it means to be a grower who works with the soil and carries enslavement and indentureship in my inheritance, in my ancestry—and also doing that in England of all places.”
Investigating people and place is a common theme for many nature writers from marginalised backgrounds. For Poppy Okotcha, ecological horticulturist and writer based in Devon, the inspiration behind her book coming out this spring, A Wilder Way: How Gardens Grow Us (Bloomsbury), was “partly unpacking identit”. In her memoir set in her wild garden, Okotcha touches on the Indigenous cosmology, religion and culture of her Igbo ancestors—hailing from parts of modern-day Nigeria—on her father’s side, as well as her British heritage and the climate crisis. She says, “A strong connection with landscape and with cultural heritage that’s tied in with landscape and the importance of being a responsible steward is only possible when we have a strong sense of personal identit in connection with the land.” While authors have been writing about nature for as long as there have been books, 2020 had a significant two- pronged effect on the current landscape of nature writing. An interest in outdoor spaces and gardening drastically rose during the pandemic. According to the mental health charit, Mind, over seven million people in the UK have taken up gardening since the pandemic. And over three million people said their mental health benefited from moving out of an urban area and accessing outdoor spaces. Simultaneously, it became clear who in societ was able to access land and who wasn’t. The Office of National Statistics found that Black people are nearly four times as likely as white people to have no access to outdoor space at home. “I was fortunate to grow up in a home that always had
a kitchen garden, and so I appreciate what it is to have access to organic homegrown fruit and vegetables,” says J C Niala, a writer, historian and artist. “I was also aware that having access to land to grow your own food is not
Investigating people and place is a common theme for many nature writers from marginalised backgrounds
to be taken for granted. Who has access to land and who doesn’t and what that access means was an interest that steadily grew for me.” While Covid-19 ripped through the world, there was also a global resurgence of the Black Lives Mater Movement in 2020. Many were beginning to think about their connections to the ground beneath their feet alongside the histories and legacies surrounding nature, agriculture, ecology and land ownership. “Nature writing and the rise of Black voices go hand-in-hand because that decolonisa- tion element feeds both into our relationship with nature and with our relationship with race,” Okotcha explains. “Both involve the process of othering. Currently, the climate crisis is driven by the exploitation of land. That same process happens with people and that’s basically what has led to our current institutionalised racism that we see globally today.”
Institutions, including publishing, rushed to address anti-Blackness and a lack of diversit. “There was obvi- ously this internal, external reckoning that publishing felt it had to undergo and what that looked like was a lot of people very hungrily looking for pitches and ideas and books by people they knew that hadn’t been particularly well represented,” Ratinon notes. “I just know so many Black authors who felt really let down and really disil- lusioned with their experience in publishing.” It’s a point reiterated by Rhiane Fatinikun, founder of Black Girls Hike and author of Finding Your Feet: The how-to guide to hiking and adventuring (Bloomsbury). Her book, coming out this year, dives into the British countryside with the hopes of encouraging everyone, but especially Black women, to hike—told through interviews, memoir and practical tips. Although Fatinikun found the process of writing cathartic in many ways, she also acknowledges that the publishing industry is a difficult place to navigate. “I think the process can be quite stressful actually,” explain- ing that a “certain narrative” of writing about racism and trauma can oſten be pushed onto Black nature writers. And while having more voices in nature writing is a posi- tive change, it can’t stop there. “I know it’s easy to splash a six-figure deal on an underrepresented author or support a cause only so you can send a press release about it and say the work is done,” Clarke says. “But that’s just short-term brownie points, not lasting change.” So, what are the hopes for the future of nature writing?
POPPY OKOTCHA
TheBookseller.com
“Forgive the terrible pun, but nature writing is blooming,” Niala believes. “I hope that it only continues to grow. My hope is that one day when I Google African women nature writers I get a long list of names that I can draw on and refer to.” And while Okotcha also believes in the necessit of representation within nature writing, it must go further than identit politics alone. “It’s important to have people in the space who are not only representing a diversit of voices but also are representing progressive politics.” Fatinikun adds: “I just want to see more of us. More of us platformed, more of us doing well, more of us geting marketed well… and more variet as well, I don’t want people to feel pigeon-holed into certain things.” There is a clear shiſt in nature writing, one that it well-overdue, one that is reaching out to bring everyone—and especially those most in the margins—back to nature.
25
© Gaby Sweet
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40
