Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape

"Lauret Savoy is an African American geologist who has written a groundbreaking book. She’s talking not only about her relationship to place, but the places that, in a way, have been stolen from her and her family and their legacy. A lot of environmental literature—since I’ve been involved, going back to the late 60s—has assumed that a place-based orientation builds commitment. It builds affiliation to both the natural and the human community. That is true and there’s a whole generation of environmental educators and thinkers who’ve written about this, as I have. “These books bring more depth to our lives: that’s why I chose them” What Lauret Savoy does in this book, brilliantly, is she brings the issue of race and equity into the equation in a highly personal way. She discusses her travels through America as a child and as an adult. In every case, her affiliation with place is disturbed by the legacy of racism and slavery. It’s a reminder to us that places have legacies that are historical and cultural, as well as ecological, and all of these functions are tied together. They are part of the picture of what we mean by human-nature relationships. Plus, this book is really well written. The language is beautiful and evocative. She brings her scientific sensibility and aesthetic to it, while at the same time uncovering a lot of the dark side of American history , both in terms of the African American experience and the indigenous experience. No, it’s not, it covers a lot of her travels. It covers her family travels as a young child, some of the things they had to do, where they had to avoid certain places. Then she revisits them and looks at the places, again, both ecologically and historically. I use this book in my teaching a lot. Students from a variety of backgrounds resonate with it."

"I am fascinated by the way in which landscape holds the narratives of our absence, leaving behind the traces of our presence to tell our stories. Trace is a complex and beautiful book. Savoy explores questions about identity, race, access, and what it means to belong, through the stories that are held in the land. There is a need to name the landscape—what shapes and scars it—to reclaim its language so that these stories can be told because: “Once given breath, the names incanted spells.” This is what I love about this book. It is at once forensic and expansive, intimate and urgently political. Here, the natural landscape is both surrounding us, and part of us—its stories intrinsically part of our own, and vice versa: ‘The past and its landscapes lie close. They linger in eroded, scattered pieces, both becoming and passing into what I am, what I think we are.’"