Who Tells the Story

In Lauret Savoy's "The Future of Environmental Essay," Savoy connects the way we write about the environment with the way we've written about and interacted with minorities and marginalized groups of people. The irony of the traditional environmental essay, according to Savoy, is that the care and responsibility that's called for in regards to the environment through these essays was never reciprocated with minorities. In some ways, these essays unintentionally (or perhaps intentionally) imply that we have more of a social responsibility to the land than to other human beings of minority background. Harking back to our conversations about Black Nature, our perceptions of what nature writing is largely consists of the white male perspective, excluding voices of color and gender minorities. Because we are all within nature, we all have a relationship with nature, no matter our background. And by forgetting that other people (black slaves, indigenous people, poor people, etc.) also have relationships with nature, we participate in the dehumanization and erasure of minority groups. To Savoy, the lack of minority voices in nature writing and environmental essays is indicative of an unchanged American system of power (through sex, gender, class, and race), and that part of overcoming discrimination is rewriting our definitions of what environmental essays can be.

So how do we begin to rewrite these definitions? Outside of reading new voices and seeking out minority nature writers, what strategies can we use within our own writing to combat previous perceptions of what nature writing can be? First, in what ways can traditional perceptions of how nature functions in society be discriminatory of minority groups? And then, how do we change those frames of reference? Just as our writing changes when we prioritize nonhuman perspectives, how will our writing change when we prioritize minority voices?