Thinking Big as a Black Writer
I am an African-heritage author and climate activist with Black U.S. (South Carolina), Puerto Rican, and West Indian roots.
I came to climate work in 2017 when Hurricane Maria devastated one of my family’s homelands. Since then, I’ve been writing climate novels—each one bolder—that imagine what it would look like to win climate justice.
At a recent RC climate workshop, Diane Shisk [International Commonality Reference Person for Care of the Environment] encouraged each of us to develop our five-year climate plan. It emboldened me to move beyond solitary functioning and think bigger.
During the workshop, I gave myself the title “Minister of Climate Justice Fiction Propaganda,” and I put it on social media. I’ve been expanding my vision and job description ever since. I am producing a conference called “Black Literature vs. The Climate Emergency” to amplify Black writers around the globe who are telling how we can win climate justice with African-heritage people in the center of that fight.
My new plan is to take a leave from my teaching job next year to found a publishing imprint that will crank out [quickly produce] climate justice pulp fiction. The books selected will depict a hopeful picture of winning climate justice and a mass movement that is fighting for it to happen! The business model would be based on the old-school pulp fiction industry in which novels were produced quickly, were affordably priced, and offered content that would appeal to the masses. I am in conversation with a publisher about that imprint. The business model also has a zero-carbon distribution footprint—all novels would be e-book and audio only.
I often feel like I am out of my depth [in unfamiliar territory]. My distress recordings miss the comfort of working alone. I often have the feeling that maybe this publishing plan is a good idea, but that if it was good, someone else would already be doing it. It’s a little scary to think that no one out there is more qualified to do it than I am—because that means that no one else is coming to save us. It’s up to us [we’re the ones who must do it]. But I’ve spent the past thirty years building relationships and skills in writing and publishing so that I, together with my Black people, can make the biggest possible contribution to the climate movement.
Berkeley, California, USA
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders in care of the environment
(Present Time 208, July 2022)