Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret
Written by Catherine Coleman Flowers
Narrated by Karen Chilton
4/5
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About this audiobook
struggle, today it’s Ground Zero for a new movement that is Flowers’s life’s work. It’s a fight to ensure human dignity through a right most Americans take for granted: basic sanitation. Too many
people, especially the rural poor, lack an affordable means of disposing cleanly of the waste from their toilets and, as a consequence, live amid filth.
Flowers calls this America’s dirty secret. In this powerful book she tells the story of systemic class, racial, and geographic prejudice that foster Third World conditions, not just in Alabama, but across
America—in Appalachia, Central California, coastal Florida, Alaska, the urban Midwest, and on Native American reservations in the West.
Flowers’s book is the inspiring story of the evolution of an activist, from country girl to student civil rights organizer to environmental justice champion at Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice
Initiative. It shows how sanitation is becoming too big a problem to ignore as climate change brings sewage to more backyards, and not only those of poor minorities.
Editor's Note
MacArthur ‘genius’ winner…
Do you know about “America’s dirty secret”? Catherine Coleman Flowers has made that secret her life’s work: ensuring that rural Americans have access to basic sanitation. Called the “Erin Brockovich of Sewage,” Flowers explores the systemic biases (race, class, geography) that affect citizens from Alabama to Alaska. “Waste” is also a personal story, giving readers a look at the path of Flowers from rural Alabama to environmental justice champion. Flowers was awarded a MacArthur “genius” grant in 2020.
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Reviews for Waste
22 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5More interesting (if somewhat depressing) things I have learned about our country: the clay-heavy soils of Alabama make the use of standard septic systems very difficult, breaking and rendering them ineffective within a few years if not adapted specifically to this area. Why does this matter? Well, many households and small businesses in rural Alabama, including the author's native Lowndes County, already struggle to get by, and their broken (or simply absent) septic systems are making them sick, causing criminal charges that cause further burdens, and generally not allowing them to live with dignity. If you have heard about the environmental justice movement but not what they are trying to do, Flowers provides great examples on how to turn this problem around in here.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The New York Times recommends the book "Waste" by Catherine Coleman Flowers which details her lifetime of activism and the lack of proper sewage treatment in the rural and poverty stricken Lowndes County, Alabama. I was drawn to to book for its documentation of sanitation problems, policies to support public health, identification of significant hookworm cases, and solutions to improve conditions. Certainly Catherine Coleman Flowers is central to this narrative, however the focus on the author herself detracts from the issues of inequity and their solutions. For those looking for a chronicle of activism, politics, and major players this book will suit you. Those seeking information on rural sanitation, articles by The New York Times, National Public Radio, Rotary Magazine, and many others will suffice.