- Title Pages
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction Into the Wildness
- 1 Wildfire News
- 2 Conundrum and Continuum
- 3 No Word
- 4 The Edge of Anomaly
- 5 Order versus Wildness
- 6 Biomimicry
- 7 Notes on “Up at the Basin”
- 8 Listening to the Forest
- 9 The Working Wilderness
- 10 The Hummingbird and the Red Cap
- 11 Losing Wildness for the Sake of Wilderness
- 12 Inhabiting the Alaskan Wild
- 13 Wilderness in Four Parts, or Why We Cannot Mention My Great-Grandfather’s Name
- 14 Wild Black Margins
- 15 Healing the Urban Wild
- 16 Building the Civilized Wild
- 17 Cultivating the Wild on Chicago’s South Side
- 18 Toward an Urban Practice of the Wild
- 19 The Whiskered God of Filth
- 20 The Akiing Ethic
- 21 On the Wild Edge in Iceland
- 22 The Story Isn’t Over
- 23 Cultivating the Wild
- 24 Earth Island
- Epilogue Wild Partnership
- Permissions
- About the Contributors
- Index
Wild Black Margins
Wild Black Margins
- Chapter:
- (p.137) 14 Wild Black Margins
- Source:
- Wildness
- Author(s):
Mistinguette Smith
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
This essay contrasts traditional conservation perspectives with self-described black experiences of relationship to land. Interviews with black people about their relationship to land describe experiences of unbounded intimacy with the natural world found with equal measure in urban, rural, and “wilderness” spaces. Questioning the hard boundaries between wild and cultivated life, interview participants describe black relationships to land as creating a liminal space where history meets and becomes part of the natural landscape. Social marginalization based on race is revealed to create both enduring transgenerational land-based harm and a unique ecotone, filled with diversity, resilience, and the seeds of wild black knowledge.
Keywords: black land, race, margin, urban wild, boundaries, ownership, ecotone
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- Title Pages
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction Into the Wildness
- 1 Wildfire News
- 2 Conundrum and Continuum
- 3 No Word
- 4 The Edge of Anomaly
- 5 Order versus Wildness
- 6 Biomimicry
- 7 Notes on “Up at the Basin”
- 8 Listening to the Forest
- 9 The Working Wilderness
- 10 The Hummingbird and the Red Cap
- 11 Losing Wildness for the Sake of Wilderness
- 12 Inhabiting the Alaskan Wild
- 13 Wilderness in Four Parts, or Why We Cannot Mention My Great-Grandfather’s Name
- 14 Wild Black Margins
- 15 Healing the Urban Wild
- 16 Building the Civilized Wild
- 17 Cultivating the Wild on Chicago’s South Side
- 18 Toward an Urban Practice of the Wild
- 19 The Whiskered God of Filth
- 20 The Akiing Ethic
- 21 On the Wild Edge in Iceland
- 22 The Story Isn’t Over
- 23 Cultivating the Wild
- 24 Earth Island
- Epilogue Wild Partnership
- Permissions
- About the Contributors
- Index