UC Merced Magazine | Volume XIX, Issue V

THREE ESSENTIAL READS | Sustainability By Professor Katherine Steele Brokaw

“ e Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California,” by Mark Arax About: Fresno native Arax is one of the most important writers of the American West. is book has been called his “crowning achievement,” and it documents the complexities of California’s water system, from the sustainable ways Native American tribes used snowmelt and rivers through to the construction of water projects and pumping of groundwater that puts today’s farmers and residents at considerable risk as drought and ood become more frequent in our warming world. Campus Connection: Arax has visited UC Merced several times and recently met with my eatre and Ecology students this fall, inspiring their work on a class-produced play about California’s environment.

“Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds,”

“Living Downstream: An Ecologist’s Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment,” by Sandra Steingraber About: Steingraber has been hailed as the next Rachel Carson, and her powerful and precise writing is a product of the fact that she double majored in English and biology in college, and has both a master’s of ne arts in poetry and a Ph.D. in biology. Steingraber was diagnosed with cancer at age 20, and in this book, she uncovers links between exposure to pesticides and other chemicals and the prevalence of cancer in her native Central Illinois and other areas of the country. Why this book is important: e book makes a powerful case for the intimate connection between environmental injustice and public health. In 2016, all of UC Merced’s rst-year students read “Living Downstream” before meeting Steingraber when she gave a lecture on campus. Steingraber was one of our inspirations when designing UC Merced’s new environmental humanities major, launching this fall.

by adrienne maree brown About: is is a wonder of a book, in which brown looks to the natural world — and its constant state of ux — to come up with models for the kinds of strategies we humans need to adapt for “radical self-help, society-help and planet-help.” She imagines ways to create more just futures by emulating the communities formed by plants and animals, and by looking at the utopian ideas of Black science ction writer Octavia Butler. Why this book is important: I have taught chapters of this book in many of my courses and our students nd it a helpful, upli ing antidote to climate anxiety: brown shows them that nothing is inevitable, and there is always another way.

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