#Ayana Elizabeth Johnson

[dailysudeikis]

Jason Sudeikis and Ayana Elizabeth Johnson at Ayana's book launch in NYC. - September 17, 2024.

[higherentity]

[maiathebee]

Without knowing the outcome, we have to try anyway; without a single guarantee, we must show up.  So we focus on how to understand where we are and where we go from here. As the subtitle lifts up, we must summon truth, courage and solutions. This trifecta can move us forward, through aching uncertainty.

From the introduction to All We Can Save: Truth, Courage and Solutions for the Climate Crisis by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson

[inclineto]

Books, July-August 2024

The English Experience - Julie Schumacher [I thought Dear Committee Members was excellent, and The Shakespeare Requirement too realistically curmudgeonly to be funny; The English Experience is closer to the first, and what Schumacher writes especially well are the inadvertent, unrecognized profundities of students writing very badly]

Come and Get It - Kiley Reid [the last 80ish pages: damn. damn!]

Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia - Christina Thompson

Weather - Jenny Offill

War Among Ladies - Eleanor Scott ["Books about education" seems to be July's unintentional theme; this quietly vicious short novel about the bureaucratic, relentless grinding down of women's potential makes me want to reread South Riding]

Orbital - Samantha Harvey [didn't feel certain about this in the first couple of pages, but my god it's made of stars] *

All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis - edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson [the chapters with good writing are overwhelmed by the many tedious essay versions of a "thank you for coming to my TED talk" pitchdeck; dnf]

High Times in the Low Parliament - Kelly Robson [I was on a plane]

Curious Tides - Pascale Lacelle [one of those all vibes/no classes dark academia settings; looming signs of YA love triangle; dnf]

The Manuscripts Club: The People Behind a Thousand Years of Medieval Manuscripts - Christopher de Hamel [I suddenly, desperately want to know what de Hamel - a former Sotheby's employee himself - thinks of The Stegosaurus Auction, aka the most nsfw sfw video I have seen this year]

[storytelling-2075]

Climate Storytelling 2075 is pleased to announce the upcoming launch of the inaugural cohort’s anthology in September of 2024.

These artists and storytellers offer us an expansive and uplifting roadmap to a climate future where, to borrow from Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (@ayanaeliza), we “get it right.”

Join us as we spotlight our young storytellers.

In the timeless words of @tonicadebambara “The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible.” The works in this inaugural anthology illuminate the beauty and promise of a climate revolution, helping us envision a just world for people and planet.

This September, the 2024 cohort of climate storytellers envision a 2075 free from the dystopian narratives that dominate the public imagination. From the frontlines, these artists and storytellers offer an equitable vision of a thriving future.

Watch this space for announcements of the digital and print publications, as well as opportunities to experience the work with a public launch this fall.

Interested in partnership, offering mentorship to young artists, or sponsorship? Email climatestorytelling2075@gmail.com

https://www.instagram.com/climatestorytelling2075

[adapembroke]

Astrology for the Present

I was a grad student in my mid-20s when I discovered Come on All You Ghosts by Matthew Zapruder. I was in Berkeley in the winter in the rain, and this jaunty little book of poetry with its black cover, handwritten chalk font, and sunny strip of bright pink was the perfect mix of rawness and twee optimism for that moment in my life. 

The title poem is about death–as you would expect–but it is also about a light up skull keychain, David Foster Wallace, and depression. It fades out in the end into something like a rallying cry:

“If a nation 

can fall asleep

it can wake up not

exactly angry but a little dizzy

with pleasant hunger.”

Collectively in the US, we have been talking about “joy” a lot lately, like we talked about “hope” and “change” in 2008. Come on All You Ghosts is not about joy. Zapruder isn’t afraid to say that “the sea seems more / than a little angry.” But there is a hope to this work that I’ve been hungry for, and it doesn’t make me feel like my mouth is stuffed full of rock candy.

It reminds me of something I heard author and marine biologist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson ask on the radio recently: “What if we get it right? What if we are getting it right right now?” 

Right now.

For the last couple months, I’ve been doing a daily horoscope column on Threads and Instagram for people with Leo ascendants. I was talking with a colleague recently about horoscope writing, and she said that she can’t do daily horoscopes every day. She has to batch them all at once over a weekend.

It’s the opposite for me. I need to wake up in the morning and feel into the energy of the moment. When I try to predict how things will feel, I get into my head too much. I get too theoretical and lose track of my heart. 

I envy the astrologers who are able to calmly stand in front of a chart and talk about the weather like a meteorologist inside a news studio. Often, I feel like a weather reporter standing on the beach in front of a hurricane, talking about the rain. 

Astrology tends to attract people who are future-oriented. We believe that if we can just prepare thoroughly enough for what’s coming, we’ll know the right thing to do and say at all times. It creates this dynamic where we are always living five steps ahead. Always aspiring, always improving, never arrived. Stuck in the idealism of an impossible future, frustrated whenever we’re forced to deal with life as-is. 

What if the hope–or even the joy–we need isn’t waiting for us in a future that never becomes the present? What if this is the moment we can step into, not perfection, but “books made of blue sky” or “terrible marvels?”

I don’t think it’s an accident that mythology and folklore is full of warnings for people who consult oracles. It isn’t because we’re helpless, bound by fates we can’t control. It’s because no amount of work in the present can control the future. This is the only moment we can touch.

If we live in the present, we won’t get it right. We will find ourselves staring in open-mouthed confusion, utterly unprepared. But that is why we’re here, to dance with the moment instead of marking out the perfect choreography of all the things we will do… tomorrow. 

Related Articles

[apatosaurus]

Looking forward to this book by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson! “What if we get it right: Visions of Climate Futures” is due out September 17.

[lboogie1906]

Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (August 23, 1980) is a marine biologist, environmental strategist, and policy expert. Born to a teacher and an architect, She was raised in Brooklyn.

She earned a BA in Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard University. She earned a Ph.D. in Marine Biology from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Her dissertation focused on the bionomics and social and economic factors of maintaining coral reefs sustainably. She was awarded an American Association of University Women Fellowship, a Switzer Environmental Fellowship, a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, and an NSF Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Fellowship. She won the first Rare/National Geographic Solutions Search contest for the fish trap that she invented. She held a policy position in the Environmental Protection Agency and, she held a policy position in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She went on to occupy the role of Director of Science and Solutions at the Waitt Foundation.

She led the Caribbean’s first-ever successful ocean zoning project. This zoning project resulted in the protection of the coastal waters of Barbuda.

She spearheaded the growth of this initiative, successfully instituting it in Curacao and Montserrat through partnerships. She is the founder and president of a consulting firm, Ayana Elizabeth Consulting. She founded an ocean policy think tank called Urban Ocean Lab which works to develop ocean policy solutions for coastal cities.

She was among the inaugural members of the TED Residency program and an Aspen Institute Scholar. She works as an Adjunct Professor of Environmental Studies at New York University, a National Geographic blogger, a volunteer co-director of partnerships for the March for Science, and is an independent consultant for climate policy issues and ocean conservation working with non-profits through her consulting firm. Her work has been featured in Nature magazine, The New York Times, Scientific American, and The Atlantic. In her spare time, she is a dance party organizer and jazz singer. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[futurerise]

WHERE I’M AT

PRO:

Disability-activism-informed environmentalism

Inside growing

Collective action

Gardening for the rest of us

Farmer’s markets

Small-scale agriculture

future food

hope on purpose

land back + decolonization

physical media

right to repair

mycology

green death practices

right to privacy + digital privacy

abolition (both cops and prisons)

transformative justice

an ad-free future

local community

foraging

sci-fi aesthetics and movements that allow us to imagine a better future, including solarpunk and afro-futurism

a more equitable, inclusive future

better ways of giving money and running non-profits

hearing and thinking about voices from across futurist movements

understanding how the news media cycle and current news climate and culture impact our understanding of the world

Ursula K. Le Guin, adrienne maree brown, Octavia Butler, Rebecca Solnit, Robin Wall Kimmerer 

INTERESTED IN:

Space travel, both private and state-sponsored, with an optimistic but critical eye

all sorts of sci-fi and sci-fi aesthetics

the impact of nature on the human brain, and humans’ connection to nature

fixing effective alturism

nature and STEM education

alternative and hypothetical political models

expanding my understanding of environmentalism from a disability-justice-informed perspective

WARY OF:

greenwashing

perfectionism, “one size fits all”, and uncompassionate views on personal environmental responsibility

eco-facism

non-intersectional eco-activism

BOOKS AND RESOURCES:

News + Publications:

Future Crunch (bi-weekly optimistic newsletter)

YES! magazine (”solutions journalism”)

Science, Food, Nature, Foraging

Best American Science and Nature Writing from the past few years

Forager’s Harvest by Samuel Thayer

Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake (mushrooms!)

How to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis (among other things, covers how to balance environmental ideals with accessibility needs)

Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg

Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky (explicitly covers environmental grief)

Peacebuilding + Transformational Justice + Surviving in this century

Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown

Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein

Racism and Decolonization

Decolonization Is Not A Metaphor

White Fragility by Robin Diangelo

An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roseanne Dunbar Ortiz

ON MY TO-READ LIST:

Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown

more Butler and Le Guin

All We Can Save by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson

[ouroboobos]

🩵

All We Can Save ed. by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, OR Watch Over Me by Nina Lacour if you prefer fiction :))

[dandelion-network]

I haven't been reading anything lately because of a lot of things going on in my life - some health things, physical and psychological - and school- and work-related. Not even beginning to touch on the international happenings as well.

I feel hopeful for next year for the book clubs I help lead at my job though. I really slacked on the SFF book club but I volunteered to lead March's read of Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. I've been wanting to reread the trilogy and am excited to relive the experience and hopefully bring in more participants for the club. We're changing the day and time from Mondays at 7pm to Thursday at 6pm since surveys have shown people like programs during Wednesday-Sunday and I felt 7pm was a little too late into the night.

I also met with my other coworker for our environmentalism book club and determined the lineup for next year. We're going bimonthly since we've observed not many of our participants finish the books before we meet. We also decided on a nonfiction-nonfiction-fiction schedule. Next year's book lineup is:

The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative by Florence Williams

Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape by Cal Flyn

The Overstory by Richard Powers

The Silent Earth: Averting the Insect Apocalypse by Dave Goulson

All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson & Katharine K. Wilkinson

The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson

[dailysudeikis]

Jason Sudeikis and Ayana Elizabeth Johnson backstage at Ayana's book launch in NYC. - September 17, 2024.

[maiathebee]

For too long Americans have tended to compartmentalize climate change as something that affects (poor, Black, and Brown) people far away, something that is too bad but not our problem. Well, that bubble has burst: hurricanes in the Gulf and Caribbean and along the Eastern Seaboard; fires on the West Coast; floods in the Midwest; droughts here, deluges there, and heat waves everywhere; diseases spreading; insects and songbirds disappearing; sea level ever rising; erratic weather making it harder to grow food. Our visionaries, many of them women and people of color have not only been warning us but illuminating paths forward.

From the introduction to All We Can Save by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson

[sa7abnews]

How We Can Move Away From the Climate Brink

New Post has been published on Sa7ab News

How We Can Move Away From the Climate Brink

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson explores what climate success could look like—if only we let it.

... read more !

[stanfave]

How We Can Move Away From the Climate Brink | TIME