Soil is about home gardening but truly about so much more. Dr. Dungy reflects on the people who have influenced—and challenged—her during key episodes of her life. She thinks about nature writing and who has historically had the privilege to practice it (white men). And she captures the feelings of lockdown, which now seems such a long time ago although it was truly quite recent. Dr. Dungy explores each idea through the lens of gardening, and her expertise as a poet comes through in each line. Soil made me reconsider how I think about gardening, the environment, and responsibility.

A stunning portrait of racism, history, and botany, set in the pandemic in Colorado.

Poet and Professor Camille Dungy takes us through her research, her moves across the country, her family history and all of the fear as she cultivates her new backyard garden project. Despite the heavy dose of academia and knowledge, Dungy’s simple yet lyrical prose lays bare her worries about her daughter, her husband, their safety and their love.

Dungy evokes the true spirit of real motherhood - communicating via text with days and months in between. She mourns the loss of flowers in her garden and sees the circle of life with warrens of rabbits outside her backdoor.

A complex yet important read.

As a Coloradan and someone who lived in Ft Collins at one point I found such a place of familiarity in this book. This book is also so much more than just a memoir of a black women gardener, but also intimately explores theme on race, being black in white places, and environmentalism. I loved this book so much and know many others will too.

That cover!

Camille Dungy brings us into her life with this memoir about her connection to the land and invites us to do just the same- to physically connect our hands to the land by gardening. As a gardener and mother I was personally engaged with the topic, and yet was still bemused by the trivia she included that I didn't know. Often I turned to my spouse with a "Hey Hun, did you know....".

Recommended for those who are interested in social justice, ecology, gardening, and family histories.

This is a lovely book that accomplishes its goal of changing the landscape of nature writing. I appreciated the way the author brought in the realities of life as a Black mother and explored how that informs her connection with the natural world. I'm so grateful to add this to my collection of nature writing and it pairs well with Braiding Sweetgrass and Inciting Joy.

This one was a bit of a struggle for me. I really enjoyed the majority of the content of the book, but it felt disjointed and I couldn’t figure out what genre to place this in. Sometimes historical, sometimes memoir, sometimes social commentary. I like all of those things, I just wish it had flowed better. I’m a mood reader and I struggled to want to pick this up because i never knew what to expect from it.

This is a beautiful memoir about Dungy's garden. And in many ways, it is the story of a garden: how it is designed, what it includes, what is planted where, and what flowers when. And it is much more than that. Dungy connects what she does in her own garden to larger topics such as Black joy, climate change, colonialism, and anti-racism. This book is also her claiming of nature writing as a genre that includes working people, women, and Black people. I don't think you have to be a gardener to enjoy this book, but it probably helps. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC.

Soil is a book that is part history, part memoir, part adventures in gardening, and every part about living well. I loved this book, and could not put it down, once I started reading. What Camille T. Dungy does is bring the reader into her garden and invite us to dig and plant with her and at the same time to pause to reflect on our own relationship to nature. I can't wait to reread this book, and have already recommended it to friends.

"I can’t dig in my garden, my two-tenths of an acre of some homesteader’s one hundred and sixty, without digging up all this old dirt."

This quote perfectly sums up Dungy's book as she reflects on her life, her family's history, and what it means to be a black mother in America while tediously turning her homogeneous lawn into a pollinator's dream. I learned a lot about nature as I read this book. I greatly enjoyed the parts where she shared her upbringing and raising her daughter.

Thank you to the author and publisher for my copy. I consumed the majority of this read while sitting amongst the flowers I specifically chose to please the hummingbirds and bees.

"They frighten me, these thoughts of long months when I don’t have my garden to give me something to do with my hope and my hands."

I feel conflicted about this one. On the one hand, Dungy's writing is beautiful and she has a strong, distinctive voice. I love a book about a garden, justice, and connection to land! On the other, the book just did not feel cohesive. There were so many long tangents and moments when I was asking myself "wait, did I accidentally switch books??!" For some topics, the connection to her garden was just not made strong enough. I didn't necessarily understand what this book was meant to be and the scope felt far too broad. A solid third of the book felt like reading a bunch of random literature reviews. Even though the book on its own was alright, I felt like it was seriously mis-marketed--this definitely was not a book about a woman's garden. I personally would have written the synopsis differently.

Overall though, may be an interesting book for those interested in environmental justice and racism.

Thanks to Simon & Schuster for giving me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Shoutout for the gorgeous cover and photos within the book!

Soil felt like a homecoming. I was insanely enraptured in the prose and I’m still processing all of my thoughts on my relationship to the land. this book is poignant and comforting at a time when we truly need it!
Dungy’s writing is absolutely marvelous and I am so glad to have had the chance to read this wonderful memoir!
Dungy's writing has inspired me to find more naturalist writers and go sit in my grandmother's garden and just feel the life happening around me.
My favorite lines:
“I know it might take a lot of work,” I told her, “but I want to grow something beautiful.”
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” I told Callie, “that the man who invented one of the first lawnmowers was
Black.”
To be first is often lonely and vulnerable
History is perennial, returning regardless of how poorly it’s tended.

"Whether a pot in a yard or pots in a window, every politically engaged person should have a garden. By politically engaged, I mean everyone with a vested interest in the direction the people on this planet take in relationship to others. We should all take some time to plant life in the soil. Even when such planting isn’t easy." 
Poet Camille Dungy shares the story of her garden and her commitment to the soil in which she and her family have rooted themselves -- in the micro and macro senses. With grace and poetic dexterity, Dungy weaves her personal gardening odyssey with natural history, environmental justice, and social justice to create a lyrical manifesto. In this seminal text, she asks us to witness her aims to diversify her garden, "to make a bold, fresh way through seemingly pathless terrain." She asks us to consider for ourselves the connection between diversifying nonhuman spaces and human spaces, and she does so through the lens of her lived experiences as an African American mother living in a predominantly white community in Colorado.
"When someone asked me what hope looks like, ... 'My garden,' I answered, recalling the pine siskins rustling in the sunflowers. The bulbs I plant four to six inches deep every fall, whose blooms I believe in, though they won't manifest for months to come."

[Thanks to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for an opportunity to read an advanced reader copy and share my opinion of this book.]

Thank you to Net Galley and Simon & Schuster for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. This was a wonderful memoir and commentary about the natural world and our interaction and engagement with it. The author starts from a place of gardening, mostly in her Fort Collins, CO home. She shares a bit of her story, gardening, plants, appreciation for the natural world, social justice and weaves it all together for a wonderful story of being a human on this earth. The writing is lovely as if you're taking this journey and learning alongside the author. It is also filled with interesting facts...we are overrun with male plants so we'd have more pollen and thus possibly leading to people having more allergies. One of the possible themes is how we as humans change and force nature to do our will, instead of letting nature do it's own thing (it knows best). I love that she may let the "pests" just be as it's all part of nature. I highly recommend this book! 4.5 stars.

Dungy's poetic, beautiful language, as well as her unique perspective, sets this book apart from anything else I've read. I found this book to be both comforting and challenging and highly recommend it.

It is utterly amazing when the ordinary becomes extraordinary. The author of Soil is able to use the diversity in nature to give nurture what must be encountered by people who are resistant to change and embrace conformity, The garden and its contents hold the key to change and allow others to see the importance of differences and how that can translate into other areas of our lives. The use of metaphor and the language of this book aims to allow others to come to understand the use of the garden as the key to learning. You will enjoy this book and see how the author is so passionate about diversity no matter the form.

This beautiful cover sets the stage for an intricately-woven memoir about soil, gardening, race, family, and environmental justice that grabbed my imagination and heart. I expected to learn from Dungy, but I feel like she led me on a meandering ramble through her inner knowing, as well through her physical landscape.

I read an advance e-copy for review, courtesy of Simon and Schuster and NetGalley. But I'll be buying a hard copy to keep on my shelves.

This book is amazing!!!
What I loved:
1. THAT COVER! It is so beautiful!! It evokes all the feelings in the book!
2. I was led down intellectually interesting paths, I felt so emotions, I learned about topics I was already interested in and some I didn't know I was interested.
3. Dungy mirrors our society and history with the essential messiness of gardening, embracing the struggle and the beauty that lies there.

Wanted something to be a little different: It was kind of choppy in places and would drift back and forth from one topic to another without much of a segue. I think it could have been even more powerful and beautiful if it was a little more organized.

Thank you Netgalley and Simon and Schuster for the opportuntunity to read in exchange for an honest review .

I don't know that I have ever binged a non fiction book as quickly as I did Soil. This is so much more than a memoir; it's poetry, history and social commentary...I honestly don't know what I would call it except that it's beautifully, powerfully and honestly written.

At first glance, this seems to be one women's story about her journey to decolonize her home's landscape. Decolonizing a landscape means making room for more natural, organic and indigenous plants and flowers to thrive. That it itself is a book I would read. but, think about the implications of that thinking when we also parallel that to the Black Experience, womanhood and motherhood. MIND BLOWN.

I aboslutely loved the way that Dungy connects the experience of landscaping, finding a place of belonging, and the ability to thrive with experience of human displacement, creating culture, and fighting a dominant force that is designed to make "those who don't belong" fight harder to survive.

I could go on about this book for days. The implications for our world, our society, and protecting both are very far reaching.

Dungy invites us into her garden, and from there to explore the world that surrounds us. She mirrors our society and history with the essential messiness of gardening, embracing the struggle and the beauty that lies there. An inclusive and lyrical read that I recommend to gardeners of the soil and the mind.

Diversity is something I actively cultivate in my yard and my bookshelf, which is why Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden caught my eye. I’ve been working on my own version of Dungy’s “prairie project,” where she takes on the work of transforming a conventional suburban yard into a native, pollinator-friendly patch of earth. The garden is ground zero from which Dungy digs into the history of America, the absence of mothers and Black and brown people in the canon of environmental writing, and the ways we oppress plants, animals, and people. The way she weaves personal narrative with social justice concerns, plants with people, and domestic life with environmental activism is like a literary garden. For anyone who has wondered if one person tending one small plot of land is worth the effort, Soil shows what’s possible for us all. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read in exchange for an honest review.