Change the Story, Change the World: A New Climate Stories book club
Rebecca Solnit opened her 2023 article in The Guardian by asserting that “Every crisis is in part a storytelling crisis.” These words were, for me, both a radical reminder of what’s true and one of the most optimistic statements I’ve read about climate change. “We are hemmed in by stories that prevent us from seeing, or believing in, or acting on the possibilities for change,” she wrote. “What the climate crisis is, what we can do about it, and what kind of a world we can have is all about what stories we tell and whose stories are heard.”
“What the climate crisis is, what we can do about it, and what kind of a world we can have is all about what stories we tell and whose stories are heard.”
Many authors of both fiction and nonfiction are working to create new stories, ones with the power to blow open our imaginations and direct us out of our ruts of outdated thinking. To explore those new narratives together, I’m forming a New Climate Stories book club, starting on Earth Day. We’ll begin with Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility, edited by Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua. We’ll then alternate between fiction and nonfiction books. Register by April 1 to have a say in the final selections.
Some nonfiction possibilities (with links to descriptions) include: The Book of Hope by Douglas Abrams and Jane Goodall, Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation by Paul Hawken, Wild Mind, Wild Earth: Our Place in the Sixth Extinction by David Hinton, Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet by Hannah Ritchie, The Future We Choose: The Stubborn Optimist’s Guide to the Climate Crisis by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac, and A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars edited by Erin Sharkey.
Some fiction possibilities include: Eleutheria by Allegra Hyde, Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton, A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet, and The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson.
Here are the details: