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Tune in now for @emilyraboteau moderating a panel with @GhoshAmitav and @TempestWilliams for @PENworldvoices about writing and climate change! Extremely my jam and so far it's A++++++ https://virginia.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ebe3qE4dRJydpyIgI0Eqcw
The panelists on how their respective habitats led them to write about climate: Emily - the "poisoning" infrastructure of NYC; Terry - the literal "pulse" and ecological destruction of her desert home; Amitav - Hurricane Sandy's impact on Brooklyn and the cyclones in Bengal
. @emilyraboteau now discussing her incredible piece in @TheCut earlier this year https://www.thecut.com/2020/01/a-year-of-talking-about-climate-change.html
. @TempestWilliams discussing the Utah monolith! Our fascination w/it suggests the "hunger of the mysterious that has never left us as a species." It speaks to our desire for new ways of seeing, thinking, and by extension, need for artistic responses to things like climate change
. @GhoshAmitav on climate-change displacement: most people displaced remain in their own countries. In India, many ppl in Western India are from Eastern India. He now hears Bengali across the country.
He continues: he's interviewed several migrants and learned that very few of them think of themselves as climate migrants, despite many--especially from Bangladesh--being well informed about climate change. They see their migration the result of a convergence of crises.
. @TempestWilliams on migration: the aquifer in her region is emptying out b/c of drought & fracking. Indigenous communities are hyper aware of this. Animals physically distressed: ribs showing, often panting. Her convos with neighbors involve asking each other: will they leave?
. @GhoshAmitav on the Southwest paradox: Just as the region is becoming less inhabitable, large numbers of people are moving to cities like Phoenix, which *shouldn't* be habitable, but is b/c of air conditioning--an enormous strain on resources
. @emilyraboteau: showing pics of paintings of owls threatened by climate on streets in her neighborhood. She sees them as a "meditation on impermanence." As a writer on climate, she thinks about frames and structures that include animals and humans on an equal plane of importance
. @TempestWilliams we get stuck on whether climate change is hopeful, apocalyptic, or something else. But maybe the crisis is beyond language
. @GhoshAmitav Writing can't change the direction of the world--it's not that simple. But it can be inclusionary, and he works to find new forms that fit that ideal.
. @GhoshAmitav there are useful reasons to use climate "crisis" & "emergency" instead of "change" but we need to remember that there's also anxiety surrounding them, especially in less privileged areas of the world. A fear that they might help justify extreme geoengineering
. @TempestWilliams: despair, for her, represents the "limit" of her own imagination. There is "great strength" in collaboration when it comes to climate change.
. @ghoshamitav: Pope Frances is one of the best writers on climate change. Humans have long had a "ritualistic" understanding and relationship with their environments, but that way of being has been suppressed, especially in the USA.
. @TempestWilliams holding up a copy of Joy Harjo's anthology on Indigenous poetry!!! [if you want to know more about the book, check out the @ChicagoRevBooks's interview with Harjo https://chireviewofbooks.com/2020/10/13/joy-harjo-on-the-power-of-poetry/]
. @TempestWilliams How do we use words--or go beyond them--to express something unspeakable?
. @emilyraboteau: book that was meaningful to her students in her Writing about Climate class was Braiding Sweetgrass. [Seconding that recommendation!! https://bookshop.org/books/braiding-sweetgrass/9781571313560]
. @TempestWilliams loves Richard Powers' The Overstory. [seconding this rec as well!! Read @ChicagoRevBooks's interview with Powers about that book, where he said that writing it "changed his life" https://chireviewofbooks.com/2018/04/18/overstory-richard-powers-interview/]
. @GhoshAmitav 2018 was an inflection point for writing about climate change, especially in the realm of fiction (novels, short stories, etc)
. @GhoshAmitav giving shout outs to @pitchaya and @cityoftongues and @BenEhrenreich's Desert Notebooks
. @emilyraboteau on Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler: 1st book chosen by @XrRebel reading club in partnership with Brooklyn Library. They chose it b/c the protagonist has dis/ability of hyperempathetic response to others and believes that accepting change is best way forward
. @emilyraboteau, @GhoshAmitav, and @TempestWilliams: THANK YOU for this thoughtful and deeply moving discussion. Was such a pleasure to listen to.
