*New Time* This year, Lit Youngstown's monthly book discussion will focus on the idea of the writer: biographies, memoirs, fictional works with a writer protagonist. All are welcome. Haven't read the book yet? No worries. We will meet at 5:00 at the Michael Kusalaba Library. All titles will be via the public library and at the YSU Barnes & Noble.
January 13 we will discuss Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
"As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on “a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise” (Elizabeth Gilbert).
Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass—offer us gifts and lessons, even if we’ve forgotten how to hear their voices. In a rich braid of reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return." https://milkweed.org/book/braiding-sweetgrass
Remaining titles:
February 10 Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own by Eddie Glaude March 10 World of Wonders by Aimee Nezhukumatathil April 14 The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea May 12 The Planter of Modern Life: Louis Bromfield and the Seeds of a Food Revolution by Stephen Heyman