Review:
Gathering: Women of Colour on Nature
Edited by Durre Shahwar and Nasia Sarwar-Skuse
From Planet 253
Anita Roy
reviews
Gathering: Women of Colour on Nature
Edited by Durre Shahwar and Nasia Sarwar-Skuse
404 Ink, £10.99
First: a parable (with thanks, and apologies, to Hugh Lupton).
In a field in the English countryside two men stood arguing. One, a nobleman, was saying imperiously, ‘This land belongs to me. I paid good money for it. Look: here are the deeds.’ The other was just as adamant: ‘My family have worked this land for generations. It is ours. We live off it, it gives us food and shelter and wood for our fire.’ As the argument became heated, there happened upon the way an old woman. She stopped and listened for a while. The men asked her to adjudicate, since their own arguments were getting nowhere. So she knelt down and pressed her ear to the ground. ‘What on earth are you doing?’ they asked. ‘Listening to the land,’ she replied. ‘And what does it say?’ ‘It says: it is you who belong to it.’
Sign in to read moreAbout the author
Anita Roy is a writer, editor and environmentalist based in Wellington, Somerset. Her books include Gravepyres School for the Recently Deceased – a novel about death for children – and Gifts of Gravity and Light, a nature almanac she co-edited with Pippa Marland. She holds an MA in Travel and Nature Writing from Bath Spa University and is currently chair of her local Transition Town group.
