Review by Booklist Review
In this eloquent and piercing book-length essay, Savage confronts a life lived in close proximity to industrial contamination. In the wake of her father's death from cancer, a death that cannot be separated in any way, shape, or form from the job he held or the place he lived, she resolves to visit Superfund sites. Partly a work of investigation, partly an elegy to the lost innocence of bittersweet childhood, and entirely a memorial to a parent whose loss burns through every word, this is also a compassionate and incendiary look at the people who live near brownfields (polluted sites) or on the "fence lines of industry." Savage shares statistics of illness and death, explores the inherent racism of environmental degradation, and invites those with particular insight into the history of Superfund sites to share their stories. Her descriptions of bustling rail yards and abandoned mines are absorbing and disturbing; the brutality of wasted landscapes is laid bare by her sensitive prose and careful consideration. Groundglass is a beautiful book about ugliness, a lament that manages to also include moments of buoyancy and beauty in descriptions of gardens and friendship. Savage's book is a stunning achievement and a necessary record of life in America.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Poet Savage combines memoir with environmental and social commentary in her haunting debut, an account of the damage wrought by industrial waste. "The volume of polluted places" in America "overwhelms," she writes, citing the 1,322 sites on the EPA's Superfund National Priority List in addition to another 450,000 active brownfields, or "old polluted industrial sites." Savage grew up and still lives near waste sites in Minnesota ("I can remember the noise of industry coming through the screened window... the place I'm from has long been a magnet for illegal dumping.") and uses her father's terminal stomach cancer, possibly caused by pollution, as a through line as she explores fears of what might be happening in her own body ("environmental pollutants... can be transmitted genetically"), and the racist history behind where waste sites were placed. Savage gives voice to those fighting at the front lines of their communities, as well, and shares sobering statistics about the prevalence of toxic locations ("roughly 60% of the U.S. population" lives within three miles of waste sites). It makes for a work of both elegiac beauty and horror, with no end in sight; as one woman observes, "They say this is a site of cleanup, but you can't clean up what's constantly coming down." This one's tough to forget. (Aug.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Poet/essayist Savage grew up near a US Superfund site--one of thousands of sites contaminated by hazardous substances and slated by the U.S. government for clean-up. Currently, she lives atop Minnesota's most polluted aquifer. Here she mourns the devastation to land, groundwater, communities, and people by environmental pollution while contemplating raising a young son as her father died of cancer.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A lyrical exploration of grief and ecology. After the death of her father from cancer, Savage sought answers in the detritus of Shoreham Yard, a polluted railyard in Minneapolis near where she grew up. "I live in a polluted ecotone," she writes, "a porous patch of neighborhood where two systems that shouldn't merge have, and one violates the other." The author, who teaches creative writing at Minneapolis College of Art and Design, begins her prismatic debut in the guise of a grief memoir, but the narrative encompasses ecological investigations of brownfields and Superfund sites. Savage visited nearby sites and interviewed activists and displaced survivors, finding in many the shared sentiment that local pollution must be linked to an uptick in medical problems such as cancer, miscarriages, and asthma. Although there are some standout journalistic moments in which the author transcribes emails and letters from these associates, much of the book points inward to Savage's processing of these facts and hypotheses: "Could there be something humbling and revolutionary in understanding myself as a site of contamination?"…Could restorative action and real redress grow out of this painful recognition?" The author is a deep thinker and exhaustive researcher, but many of her ideas drift into an academic rhetoric that may alienate casual readers. She cites bell hooks, Greta Gaard's Critical Ecofeminism, Anne Carson's poetry, and Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. While the author pointedly notes that compromised, polluted environments are often populated by poor, non-White families and that race and gentrification are significant factors in a troublingly multifaceted crisis, she struggles to fit into the discussion. "At the community garden," she writes, "I question my desire to seed my presence." Later, she writes, "I feel disgust at the settler archetype I embody." Despite a lack of resolve, the text resists classification. Savage creates a compelling meditation that flows beyond the typical stylings of memoir, journalism, and theory. An interrogative, existential crisis at the center of an ongoing ecological one. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
