Why Camille Dungy can’t separate her garden from Black history
In her book “Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden,” Camille Dungy creates a plot of pages enriched by their diverse mixture of nature, nurture, history, and memoir. On the one hand, “Soil” offers useful gardening tips, such as how deep to plant crocuses and alliums. But along the way, readers discover that tumbleweed was transported from Europe, black-eyed peas arrived aboard slave ships, and both gardens and children need patience and grace.
The recipient of the 2021 Academy of American Poets Fellowship and a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship, Ms. Dungy unearths American history, one that recognizes the toil of America’s Black citizens and honors their unquenchable thirst to “grow their own beauty” in what was a very parched land. Scattered throughout
