Reviews

Black Earth Wisdom: Soulful Conversations with Black Environmentalists by Leah Penniman

whatsbookinjenni's review against another edition

informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

4.0

Some great nuggets of wisdom here — the format of the book (transcribed interviews organized by theme) was not my favorite (and was not helped by listening to this on audio), but as an informational text and inspiration this was worth the read! 

nyhofs's review against another edition

challenging hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

zoebmmc's review against another edition

emotional informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

bookishtrina's review

5.0

Leah Penniman's Black Earth Wisdom blew my hair back. This collection of essays was crafted by experts in their field and is brimming with expertise, knowledge, and analysis that I didn't know I desperately needed until I picked up this read. I'm so overwhelmed with the masterpiece of the project of this work that I think I'll now add it to my annual reads. BRAVO!

I received a review copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley for my honest review. The opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.

lulureads365's review against another edition

5.0

I learned so much from this one book! It is an important, necessary, inspiring read about our relationship to the earth and how it affects every aspect of ups. Written in interview style, It’s an amazing read. It’s definitely a book I will pick up again and meditate on.

marblemenow's review against another edition

informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

cass_lit's review

3.5

Overall, I enjoyed this. Some of the essays connected more with me than others, but that’s to be expected. If you’ve got the choice, I wouldn’t recommend the audio though as it was sometimes difficult to to separate people from each other. 

ebazilereads's review against another edition

3.0

Black Earth Wisdom is a collection of conversations by Leah Penniman, a Black Kreyol farmer and co-director of Soul Fire Farm, with Black environmentalists. In order to create Black Earth Wisdom, Penniman interviewed a range of people and then compiled those interviews into "conversations" on specific topics. I really enjoyed the content of this book and learned a lot from the wisdom it contained. I think that, for whatever reason, interview-style books are harder for me to get into than other forms of nonfiction. I had the same challenge with Ezra Woodger's To Be a Trans Man. This was a fantastic book whose format didn't quite work for me - I think I may need to steer away from interview/conversation formatted nonfiction moving forward.

Thanks so much to Leah Penniman and Amistad for this ARC through NetGalley! Black Earth Wisdom is available as of February 28th, 2023.

rocomama's review

hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.75

Beautiful critical wisdom, actionable, necessary. Grateful that this wisdom exists in audio format with multiple talented narrative actors. 

fmodupe's review against another edition

hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0