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reviewed Practice by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Kinship: Belonging In A World Of Relations, #5)

Gavin Van Horn, Robin Wall Kimmerer, John Hausdoerffer: Practice (Paperback, Center for Humans & Nature) 3 stars

Volume 5 of the Kinship series revolves around the question of practice What are the …

It's okay

3 stars

  • I didn't really like reading this book! It felt like I had to keep pushing myself to keep reading.
  • It's very focused on plant life and sometimes things like water. I would have liked more focus on connecting to the natural world from the streets.
  • The whiteness and white people speaking on behalf of BIPOC folx and their experiences is overwhelming.
  • I enjoyed Kyle Whyte, Trebbe Johnson, and Alison Hawthron Deming's chapters the most
  • I skipped three chapters (one in the beginning, middle, and end).
  • There's a lot of repetition and cross citing. I would have liked more cohesion and more community-oriented collaboration.
  • I liked the inclusion of poems as a break.

@pixouls great thoughts and I look forward to this one. Two responses:

"The whiteness and white people speaking on behalf of BIPOC folx and their experiences is overwhelming": this is a huge problem in book 2 also, and a massive oversight by the authors and editors — I don't know how anyone thought this was ok.

"I liked the inclusion of poems as a break": for me, they are not a break but are crucial as a way of storytelling that escapes the essay form. I just wish there was more poetry, artwork, photography, or other forms that are not essays, because there is too much voice given to that use of language.

@pixouls agreed. Although I applaud the ambition and I do like the design, the format definitely lends itself to the mistakes that they have made with "traditional" perspectives. It's also very US-centred in voice, even when the authors are not from there.

I guess there are other online or zine publications that are meeting the need, but the better contributions in this collection are let down by some of the editing choices.