Award-winning author and critic Emily Raboteau discusses her recent book “Lessons for Survival,” a meditation on race, climate, environmental justice — and what it takes to find shelter.
From the Publisher:
"Lessons for Survival" is a probing series of pilgrimages from the perspective of a mother struggling to raise her children to thrive without coming undone in an era of turbulent intersecting crises.
With camera in hand, Raboteau goes in search of birds, fluttering in the air or painted on buildings, and city parks where her children may safely play while avoiding pollution, pandemics, and the police. She ventures abroad to learn from Indigenous peoples, and in her own family and community, she discovers the most intimate examples of resilience. Raboteau bears witness to the inner life of Black womanhood, motherhood, the brutalities and possibilities of cities, while celebrating the beauty and fragility of nature. This innovative work of reportage and autobiography stitches together multiple stories of protection, offering a profound sense of hope.
A book signing will follow the event.
Emily Raboteau writes at the intersection of social and environmental justice, race, climate change, and parenthood. Her previous books are "Searching for Zion", winner of an American Book Award, and the cult classic novel, "The Professor’s Daughter." A contributing editor at "Orion Magazine" and a regular contributor to "The New York Review of Books," Raboteau’s essays have recently appeared and been anthologized in the "New Yorker," the "New York Times," "New York Magazine," "The Nation," and elsewhere. She serves regularly as nonfiction faculty at the Bread Loaf Environmental Writing Conference and is professor at the City College of New York (CUNY) in Harlem.
Elizabeth Harman is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Philosophy and Human Values at Princeton University where she is also the Director of Early-Career Research at the Center for Human Values. Harman write on a wide range of topics within moral philosophy and is currently writing a book called "To Be a Hero", about actions above and beyond what morality requires. She is co-editor of two textbooks: "Norton Introduction to Philosophy" and "Norton Introduction to Ethics."
This event is co-presented by Labyrinth and the Princeton Public Library and is cosponsored by Princeton University’s Departments of African American Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies