Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden

I found it very engaging to not only learn about her garden journey from no gardens to a lush, wild yard. I also learned more about how a black person gets treated, and I ached for some of the insults, slights and undeserved hurts that she experienced. Just as a man can never fully understand the daily fears and misogyny that women experience, I, as a white woman, cannot fully appreciate the toll of racism. This story gave me some more understanding. The descriptions of plants, insects and critters are delightful. Reading this was an enlightening journey for me too.

Love this story. Living in FoCo, I can relate to the author’s journey. Highly recommend.

This book was life changing for me. I picked it up because I’m a Colorado resident working hard to change my landscape from grass to native plants. But Camille Dungy’s messages about the larger environmental impact of the choices we make for our yards deeply impacted me. The incredible way she wove together gardening, environmentalism, social justice, history, relationships, parenting and poetry magically connected parts of my life and passions I have which I had long been compartmentalizing. I highly recommend this book for everyone!

I believe God is in all things, and all things are in God. Camille T. Dungy connects all things to nature and nature to all things. I had to reread many parts of the book because you can get lost in the flow, however over time it actually felt like life as it was, as it is, and as it may be. Thank you for the amazing tour of your garden, on the surface and at the level of the seed and roots.

This is a terrific book, digging deeply into the soil which nurtures us all, and the cultures that it has nurtured. A striking, powerful, black woman's voice in a largely white ecosystem. Striking!

I couldn’t put this book down. Camille T. Dungy put into words the unspoken invisibility of my journey as a female academic and the unresolved feelings that remain from raising kids, working, and taking care of myself during COVID.

Dr Dungy helps me to feel nature and to realize that nature includes me and “not me”. I feel the hurt of natures “blood red fang” and smell the delicious aromas of the flora it describes. Thank you for this beautiful expansion of my world.

Having loved her poetry, and being a nature writer myself, I purchased this memoir with excitement. I enjoyed her intimate appreciation of her husband and the clear comparisons between growing a garden and a marriage, and of course their commitment to supporting our pollinator kin, but that’s where it ended for me. A dry account of a person seeking to connect with the natural world, and I couldn’t get into it beyond the first couple of chapters. Perhaps a good read for those who weren’t raised/didn’t have the opportunity to connect with the splendor and wonder of the wild, undomesticated, non human natural world or those who also have moved to a new place and are seeking to build a garden, and commune deeply with place, for the first time.