With Nature as Our Witness: The Lies of Enslavement and the Love of Earthly Being, (Paperback)

<p><strong>Nature was a secret agent in the liberation of enslaved African-Americans. <em>With Nature as Our Witness: The Lies of Enslavement and the Love of Earthly Being </em>unites the words of the formerly enslaved and art from their descendants to tell the story of how nature supports "earthly being," a necessary transformation of "human being," in the past and present.</strong></p><p><em>With Nature as Our Witness: The Lies of Enslavement and the Love of Earthly Being</em>offers readers a ceremony of environmental homecoming that both returns African-American voices to the American nature story and illuminates a pathway forward in our time of ecological upheaval.</p><p>By curating hidden wisdom from "Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1938" (an archive held by the Library of Congress), Ruffin recovers an inspirational and healing story, weaving together a hybrid-format creative non-fiction story of environmental testimony, nature's witness, and "earthly being" with oral history excerpts, prose, archival photos, poetry, zines, and original illustrations.</p><p>Ruffin asks three questions: What were the environmental experiences and perspectives of the enslaved? How did other-than-human nature witness the humanity of the enslaved? How can the environmental legacy of the enslaved inform us in an age of climate crisis?</p><p>Combining ancestral wisdom akin to Robin Wall Kimmerer's <i>Braiding Sweetgrass</i> and the paradigm-shifting power of Nikole Hannah-Jones's <i>The 1619 Project</i>, <i>With Nature as our Witness</i> repairs fissures between social and environmental reality. A book about the burden and beauty of the past, Ruffin inspires with historical clarity and fresh optimism about our future.</p><br>

• With Nature as Our Witness: The Lies of Enslavement and the Love of Earthly Being, (Paperback)
• Author: Kimberly Ruffin
• ISBN: 9798991427982
• Format: Paperback
• Publication Date: 2027-04-13
• Page Count: 0