Lessons for survival Mothering against "the apocalypse"

Raboteau (Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora, 2013) meditates on climate change, motherhood, and injustice in this lyrical essay collection. Mothering has always held its challenges, she writes, especially for mothers of Black and brown children. But the social and political upheaval, climate disasters, and the COVID-19 pandemic of the past decade have proved especially difficult to navigate. Raboteau seeks out public art in New York City, photographing Audubon bird murals, climate crisis billboards, and Know Your Rights artwork while considering the deep disparities residents face depending on their race and class. Raboteau's family story--from her grandmother escaping the Jim Crow South to her children developing asthma from pollution--demonstrates the particular burdens Black Americans face. She weaves together essays on a Yup'ik Alaskan village, the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and coastal erosion near Harriet Tubman's birthplace, all connecting back to our treatment of others and the environment. "Are we being good ancestors?" she asks. Her urgent and thought-provoking book encourages readers to face the climate crisis and oppression courageously.

"What does it mean to survive in the midst of protracted crises," asks Raboteau (Searching for Zion), a creative writing professor at the City College of New York, in this ruminative collection. Through a mix of personal essay and reportage, the author reflects on public art, climate change, the Covid-19 pandemic, and racialized violence. "Climate Signs" sees Raboteau traverse New York City's five boroughs to view 10 highway warning signs, bearing messages such as "CLIMATE DENIAL KILLS" and "NO ICEBERGS AHEAD," created by environmental artist Justin Brice Guariglia. "Mother of All Good Things," meanwhile, offers lucid reporting on energy and resource use in Israel and Palestine, as told through Raboteau's 2016 trip to the region. "The water crisis is rising for the entire Middle East due to increasing desertification, but here, in the poorest communities, the problem is most pronounced," she writes of one Palestinian village. "It Was Already Tomorrow," a year's worth of diary entries meant to capture the impact of climate change, overwhelms with its onslaught of people and places, leaving the reader feeling somewhat numb and disengaged, although the effect is clearly intended. Raboteau's at her best with "In Those Dark Days," a lyrical account of mothering in lockdown: "You dilated our contracting world. I'm telling you, wild thing, you dissolved the walls." It's a vivid and varied consideration of a world in crisis. (Mar.)

Bearing witness to a time of crisis. American Book Award--winner Raboteau responds to the turbulence of the past decade in 20 essays on issues that deeply affect her life: Black motherhood, racial inequality, climate change, her beloved father's death, and the experience and effects of the global pandemic. Searching for "lessons for survival" in perilous times, she roamed New York, where she found solace in birds--some real, others depicted in murals throughout the city--that lifted her spirits "when it felt like the world was closing in." Beset by anxiety over climate change, she traveled to Palestinian villages, where land and resources are overseen and controlled by the Israeli military; there, in the unforgiving desert, she hoped to learn how inhabitants manage their lives. In a coastal Alaskan village, she accompanied an atmospheric scientist to assess the effects of climate change in a delta basin that "is one of the fastest-warming parts of the planet." Environmental issues are not the author's only source of worry: Raising two boys, she is viscerally aware of racial injustice. Besides having "the talk" about how to protect themselves from the police, she needs "to prepare them for extreme heat and ungodly flooding." Drawing similarities between climate crises that victimize people of color more severely than whites and her grandmother's experience of fleeing the Jim Crow South, Raboteau sees her family as vulnerable to "a different hazard to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness": "the rising sea." Her own gesture for combatting unjust policy is "to talk about it among friends and family--to make private anxieties public concerns," as she does in these essays. "Climate grief and coronavirus grief feel strikingly parallel," Raboteau writes. "The solutions to both problems rely on collective action and political will." The book includes the author's photos. A thoughtful collection with an urgent message. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.