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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.

replied to pixouls's status

@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.

replied to pixouls's status

@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.