Island Free Library: Last Best Book You Read: Librarian's Edition

Press release from the Island Free Library:

by Bethany Petrik

Sep 10, 2021

Who’s Reading: Bethany, Circulation Supervisor

Last Best Book Bethany Read: Black Faces, White Spaces by Carolyn Finney

Why Bethany Liked It: This book is a collection of tightly-researched and compellingly-argued essays that explore why Black environmentalists are overwhelming ignored, and why Black Americans have been excluded from American environmental justice movement at large. A must-read for anyone who considers themselves an environmentalist, it asked me to consider who has access to outdoor spaces, the role leisure plays in environmentalism (and who has time for it), and it introduced me to Black American environmentalists I was not familiar with (John Francis and MaVynee Betsch, for starters). Follow this up with Harriet Washington’s A Terrible Thing to Waste!

In Three Words: Environmentalism’s racist history

This press release was produced by the Island Free Library.The views expressed here are the author’s own.