Abstract
Individuals who are curious to learn about environmental justice and faith are encouraged to read Melanie L. Harris’s Ecowomanism: African American Women and Earth-Honoring Faiths. Harris provides new, diverse methodologies to approach ecological or environmental justice that incorporate interreligious practices stemming from the lives of African and African American women. As defined by Harris, ecowomanism offers an approach to environmental justice that attends to the experience of women of color, specifically African American women, to illustrate how earth justice relates to social justice. Ecowomanism also illustrates the interconnectivity of earth (nature), spirit, and human beings. Harris begins by discussing ecowomanist experience, which consists of stories that connect people to the land. Harris then offers methodologies for understanding ecowomanism and provides a critical historical analysis of African and African American history as it relates to environmental justice. Finally, Harris offers insights on ecowomanism spirituality, interreligious dialogue, and ecological reparations. Harris’s book offers profound assertions for understanding ecowomanism as a form of justice.
First, the book illustrates the dynamic connection between the oppression of African and African American women and ecological oppression; this connection is the foundation of ecowomanist thought. African and African American women have endured and survived racism, classism, sexual violence, dehumanization, and sexism. Moreover, they have faced economic and environmental injustices as well—injustices that began with the colonization of Africa and America. One parallel between the injustice inflicted on African and African American women and environmental injustice concerns the raping or exploitation of the land (property) for economic gain. Harris insists that the same form of oppression can be applied to enslaved African and African American women who were viewed as property, raped, and used as mules to continue chattel slavery through childbearing, even as they worked in cotton fields or sugar and rice plantations.
In addition, Harris posits that earth justice is social justice because African American women are bound to the land—a reality that paradoxically speaks to both their oppression and their connection to the divine. The notion of being bound illustrates what Harris calls an ecostory—a woman’s testimony about her relationship to earth. Harris offers the ecostory of Alice Walker’s mother as an example. Walker’s mother worked a cotton field while she was pregnant. While working, her mother felt so ill that she could not even lift a hoe. She approached a tree and asked to die. Instead of dying, Walker’s mother fell into a deep sleep. When she awoke, she was refreshed and restored. Walker stated it was as if “a healing breeze had touched her soul” (p. 33). This story highlights the multiple forms of oppression faced by women of color. Walker’s mother not only encountered racism, but she also bore the burden of working the land to the point of exhaustion. Despite the oppressive nature of working the land, the earth also facilitates the relationship between Walker’s mother and the divine, as the earth provides restoration through a “healing breeze.” This ecostory shows how African and African American women are equipped to construct solutions to environmental injustices that are cultivated from an oppressive, yet spiritual relationship with the earth. This viewpoint is not to imply that women of African descent are the sole caretakers of the earth. Rather, Harris simply calls attention to the fact that women of African descent have significant experience doing so. This point signals one of the major goals of ecowomanism: deconstructing metanarratives that have excluded the relationship that African and African American women share with the earth as well the contributions they make for environmental justice.
Lastly, Harris maintains that spiritual intimacy with the earth is not an exclusively Christian spirituality. Throughout the book, Harris draws on African cosmology—especially the interdependence of spirit, nature, and humanity—to shape her understanding of ecowomanism. Utilizing African cosmology invites interfaith dialogue and highlights multiple avenues of ecowisdom (earth wisdom) that can be implemented in practicing earth care that produces ecological justice. The incorporation of spiritualities related to the treatment of the earth, which Harris terms ecospirituality, is one way to work for environmental justice. Ecospirituality is demonstrated though activism. It serves as “a base for conceptualizing ecowomanist thought and practicing environmental justice” (p. 79). The inclusion of spiritualities provides transformation toward ecological justice and illuminates the interconnectivity that humanity shares with the earth.
Ecowomanism is a revolutionary approach to environmental or ecological justice. For Harris, the revolution begins with including the deeds of African and African American women (as well as other women of color) in the fight for environmental justice. Harris’s work provides a solid foundation for ecowomanist thought. Because of her work, other scholars and activists can continue the work of establishing earth justice to bring about social justice.