Gathering edited by Durra Shahwar and Nasia Sarwar-Skuse

 

 Subtitled Women of Colour on Nature, this book brings together sixteen thought-provoking essays by women of colour on topics around the natural world, ranging from personal observations on nature to academic investigations of the history of colonialism on the human relationship with nature. The idea being to try to balance out the over-representation of voices from white people from richer countries on issues around climate change and biodiversity loss, which are, of course, topics that impact the global south more than anywhere. The essays are wide-ranging, and this review can only really pick out the elements that most leapt out at me.

Several contributors wrote about their feelings of being excluded from nature. In A British-Ghananian in the West Country, Louisa Adjoa Parker notes that she felt that her "face looked wrong against this rural backdrop" and "The first time [she] found an image of a Black woman in the countryside was like finding a nugget of gold." While Sharan Dariwal, in The Nature of White Sustainability, calls out the racism found in parts of the environmental movement and asks "if whiteness, in other words capitalism, had a big hand in creating this climate crisis, then when saving the land, should they not turn to those who consumed gently to become the leaders of change?"

The links between faith and nature and the human relationship with nature crops up in a number of essays. In From God We Come and to God We Return, Dr Sofia Rehman notes that "Muslim intellectual heritage is filled with odes to the oneness of human existence with all that is around it, particularly nature and an understanding that we are part of nature" Hanan Issa writes about trees, mythology and Islamic perspectives in The Sacred Arbor, sharing stories about trees found in Islamic literature and noting that trees are often used as a metaphor for the truth in Islamic texts. Meanwhile, Adéọlá Dewis in Nature, points out that "Ifa, the Yoruba belief system, teaches that we are nature." 

Some of the essays look at the relationship between nature and work in the creative sector. In The Stones of Scotland / (a) version, Alycia Pirmohamed aims to show that it is possible to be both a Muslim writer and a nature writer, that the two aren't mutually exclusive. Katherine Cleaver uses A Pencil, A Trowel and A Dinosaur Bone to explore her struggle to combine both arts and science in a satisfying career and in Nature is Punk, musician Nadia Javed writes about the relationship between nature and music.

In Nature is Queer, Jasmine Isa Qereshi considers, among other issues, the naming of wildlife after problematic people from history (a topic that the American Ornithological Society is currently aiming to correct) and notes that most species already had names, given to them by indigenous people.

Taylor Edmonds, who has worked as Poet in Residence for the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, writes about her relationship with nature and concern about rising sea levels, pondering: "Would my potential great grand-child be able to trace my routes around my hometown in the same way I had traced my great-grandmothers'?"

Susmita Bhattacharya looks at the healing potential of nature and describes how "[b]eing out in nature helped [her] see things differently" while being treated for breast cancer, and how nature has helped to change her life for the better.

Ironically, for a book that aims to be largely about inclusivity and accessibility, the full enjoyment of Maya Chowdry's In a Relationship with Sugar depends on being able to scan a QR code, thus effectively excluding the sizeable minority of people who don't have a smartphone. 

Overall, the book offers fascinating insights into various aspects of the intersections between faith, culture and nature. Though I had expected more of the essays to offer personal insights and didn't expect there to be so much historical / academic analysis, but that's a comment on my own expectations, not on the value of the contents.

This book is due to be published in February 2024, but you can pre-order it now.

Gathering, Women of Colour on Nature edited by Durre Shahwar and Nasia Sarwar-Skuse published (2024) by 404 Ink. 

Disclaimer: I was sent a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.