As our external environments are constantly changing due to gentrification and climate change, our minds have to become an archive for what and who was. In my home I have old photos of family and books from my parents. I enjoy and appreciate nostalgia because it not only reminds me how much I’ve grown, it also allows me to cherish what was without needing things to stay the same. While I have little control on how city governments and nation states allow our external environments to be violently changed, I can design my homespace to allow me to feel held in my grief as a response to these injustices. 

The Black Urbanist Blog has transformed into the Black Interior(s) Blog. This is my attempt to share my expanding thoughts on the materials in our lives and their relationships to our environment. This shift is an experiment, coalescing with a new offer I’m working on: Sacred Spaces with Teju.

In the midst of billionaires launching themselves into space, ordinary people recognizing the stock market is a game for the rich, the ocean being on fire, Beirut still rebuilding from a toxic explosion, and instagram infographics being a main way that people consume information—reading a physical book is a grounding act. It’s important that we immerse ourselves in the scholarship and writing that has been warning us about the impacts of capitalism, globalization, and over consumption on humanity and the planet for some time. What follows is descriptions of some of the books that have informed my work and perspectives on environmental justice, climate change and community organizing.

We often over simplify and amalgamate Black people’s relationship to nature, the environment, and land. I am guilty of this as well, in an attempt to highlight the violent legacies of land exploitation and Black displacement. We sometimes lose sight of the healing and complex relationships Black people (individually and collectively) have to natural places and other sentient beings. The following thoughts on Black people with gardens during the pandemic explores these myriad relationships as they relate to wider society, historical lineages, and (sub)conscious Black generational traditions.