Book Reviews

RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage reviews books, reports, new periodicals, databases, websites, blogs, and other electronic resources, as well as exhibition, book, and auction catalogs pertaining directly and indirectly to the fields of rare book librarianship, manuscripts curatorship, archives management, and special collections administration. Publishers, librarians, and archivists are asked to send appropriate publications for review or notice to the Reviews Editor.

Due to space limitations, it may not be possible for all books received to be reviewed in RBM. Books or publication announcements should be sent to the Reviews Editor: Amy Cooper Cary, Raynor Memorial Library, Marquette University, 1415 W. Wisconsin Ave, Milwaukee, WI 53233-2221, e-mail: amy.cary@marquette.edu, (414) 288-5901.

Debbie Lee and Kathryn Newfont. The Land Speaks: New Voices at the Intersection of Oral and Environmental History. New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2017. 320 p. Paperback, $34.95 (ISBN 9780190664527).

In his essay “The Land Ethic,” conservationist and writer Aldo Leopold advocates for changing “the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it” (173).1 The Land Speaks challenges readers to not only adopt this land ethic, but to practice it by listening to the land and acknowledging its agency. Authors and editors Debbie Lee and Kathryn Newfont argue that oral history can be used as a tool across fields, not just within the humanities or archival studies, to examine human relationships with the land. Adopting this tool comes with three challenges. First, oral historians need to acknowledge that “the land itself speaks”(10). Second, there are people who can “hear, understand, and translate into human language messages from the land” (10). Third, historians must recognize “that wildlife and wildlands have been marginalized and denied voice in ways that parallel the human disenfranchisement” (12). From national forests to urban landscapes, the fourteen essays in this work address these challenges and demonstrate that it is possible to record the land’s story through the oral histories of voices we would not otherwise hear. As the land speaks, it does so through the voices of indigenous peoples, hunters, firefighters, housewives, and park rangers. These voices make the work a compelling read and inspire one to discover how the land speaks in their oral history archives.

Divided into five parts, the first two, “Building Fluency” and “Listening through Place,” address the challenge of understanding the land’s fluency. As part of the Ecological Oral Histories Project, which began in 2005 at Northern Arizona University, Hopi elder Ferrell Secakuku’s oral history brings up issues of climate change and his community’s reaction to their changing environment. He postulates that his community’s deviation from traditional Hopi practices have led to natural disasters. To be heard, the land cries out through droughts and floods. By listening to the land and returning to traditional Hopi farming, Secakuku believes the land will return to normal. This theme of personal or community identity and how it defines people’s relationship with the land is prevalent throughout the first two parts of the book.

Parts 3 and 4, “Fostering Community through Environment” and “Attending to Public Land,” focus on the impact of humans on the land. In his essay on urban exploring, Ben S. Bunting Jr. argues that by exploring forgotten and abandoned spaces, the land is resurrected. By learning the history of the space and imparting their own values onto the land, explorers revitalize decaying buildings and empty rail yards. In contrast, the oral history documented by Joe Miller Holloway Jr. of life in the Savannah River Valley before the Clarks Hill Dam was built provides an insight into a vibrant agrarian community that was dramatically changed by development. These chapters could be read as the land lost in translation. However, the other four chapters in these sections demonstrate how people have successfully advocated for the land, be it through community gardens or the preservation of the Indiana Dunes. The oral histories reflect the empowerment felt by communities or individuals when they convey messages from the land and take action on behalf of the environment.

The book concludes with the final section, “Interviewing the Environment.” The previous essays build to this point: human voices can speak for the land when they are in tune with the environment. The oral histories of William R. “Bud” Moore, Penny Keck, and Vernon Carroll all demonstrate how listening to the land directed their work and formed their land ethics. By listening to nature, the authors argue we not only form a personal connection to our surroundings but can also reconnect with our early oral traditions and animal selves.

I found the most powerful essays in this collection focused on women’s relationships with the land. These chapters emphasized the running theme that marginalized voices are often the best at translating the land’s messages. In Brittany Bayless Fremion’s chapter, “Filling the Gaps with Silence: Women’s Stories and the Movement to Save the Indiana Dunes, 1950–1970,” and Betsy McCully’s chapter, “The Many Lives of Newtown Creek: A New York Story,” we learn about housewives who organized the environmental movements that brought change to their community. Through oral histories with Laurel Munson Boyers (chapter 11) and Penny Keck (chapter 13), we learn about their connections with the land and what it was like to move through the ranks of the National Park Service as a woman in the 1970s and 1980s. These voices, in unison with the land, provide unique insight into environmental and women’s history.

These essays demonstrate that the land speaks, if we are willing to take the time to listen. Lee, Newfont, and the contributing essayists convincingly argue the land has voice and agency, albeit a marginalized one. As librarians, archivists, and oral historians, we have a responsibility to document, preserve, and share its history. This book will inspire readers to listen and look for the land in their collections and pay attention to their own environment.—Jillian Sparks, Queen’s University