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Would you like to donate and help Hawai‘i FEAST and Greener Reader launch the “Urban Honolulu: Little Free Diverse Libraries" project? This project will involve building and installing little free libraries and public murals, in the hopes of contributing to the discourse on race and equity issues in Honolulu. Our organizations consider books and art to be effective catalysts of reflection, critical thinking, empathy, and conversation on these topics within communities, or even small groups of friends, and we'd like to do our part in facilitating their circulation and implementation in Honolulu. We are inspired by the work of Sarah Kamya, a New York City school counselor who is collecting book donations that amplify and empower black voices, and distributing those books to Little Free Libraries throughout the US.
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Add Greener Reader's Event Calendar to your Google calendar through this link. Click the "+google calendar" link in the bottom right corner
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If you only have a handful of time before book club, here's some things Molly suggests you browse before we meet:
- The fledgling field of empirical eco-criticism is engaged in trying to gauge the impact of these works, bringing us back to the question we asked at the beginning – can literature save the planet? This we can now re-frame as: Can climate fiction influence positive action away from unsustainable lifestyles?
- If journalists tell us the news of the world, it falls to artists to make sense of that news. Indian writer Amitav Ghosh is eager to take up the challenge.
- "Deen is respectful of folklore but still skeptical. “The story’s appeal is, I suppose, not unlike that of the Odyssey, with a resourceful human protagonist being pitted against vastly more powerful forces, earthly and divine.” Ghosh is not exactly subtle about stating his intention here, but sometimes a little clarity is nice. “Gun Island” is to be, like the Odyssey, the tale of men buffeted by the forces of nature and nation."
- Five questions for author Amitav Ghosh
- Molly: I like this comment (below) the author made about the book not being "about climate change" but more about the world we live in that is impacted and shaped by climate change. I think that's a powerful shift of narrative that we will see more and more with newer titles as literature moves from a kind of "climate future" type lens to a "climate present" type lens. Understanding that we are already living in the world that we are trying so hard to stop/shape/slow down is really important in understanding what we can do to address climate change.
- Q: One of the many themes of “Gun Island” is climate change, a topic you’ve written about most recently in your nonfiction book “The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable.” What role does literature play in fighting global warming? A: I don’t think of this book as being about climate change as such. I think of it as a book about the realities of the world we’re in. And the world we’re in is profoundly disturbed by climate change. Just think of the ways in which migration has destabilized the entire continent of Europe, and really, all of North America. We can already see the ways in which climate change is actually going to completely transform the world that we’re in. I don’t think that one can segregate this as just being a matter of climate. It’s a much broader set of impacts.
- Q: What purpose does myth and folklore serve in your work? A. If we are not to look at the world in that sort of mechanistic vein, which has actually given us the disaster that we’re in, then where do we look? And if you think of, say for example, the Indigenous people who were at Standing Rock fighting the pipelines, what were they drawing upon? Look at what’s happening at Mauna Kea today, where they’re trying to put a huge observatory on top of a mountain and the Indigenous peoples are resisting — because for them it’s a mountain that is in fact sacred. I think, in confronting this reality that we are in, we are in many ways trying to find different ways of thinking, different resources for thinking. Myth and folklore often are resources that we can draw upon, especially for writers.
- “I am sorry if this does not conform to stereotypes of Indians — but I am not religious and don’t believe in the supernatural" Deen to Cinta"
- Molly: I like this because it shows just how much Deen, who loves literature, is trying to be a person who is grounded in reality but is pushed by his circumstances into a fantastic world. It also touches on the interplay between the reality of climate change (past and present) and the stories/superstitions/tales that individuals and groups fall into to explain the natural world.
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What Are We Reading In 2020?
We gathered book suggestions from the most faithful Greener Readers and other bibliophiles we dreamed and schemed with throughout 2019. See what we voted for and when we'll meet to discuss them, and click to view what their other suggestions were if you're looking for recommendations! Also, support local and independent bookstores and make a custom order through Da Shop of any books on the list they don't already have in stock!
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