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Title details for Dear America by Simmons Buntin - Available

Dear America

Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy

by Simmons Buntin
Elizabeth Dodd
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America is at a crossroads. Conflicting political and social perspectives reflect a need to collectively define our moral imperatives, clarify cultural values, and inspire meaningful change. In that patriotic spirit, nearly two hundred writers, artists, scientists, and political and community leaders have come together since the 2016 presidential election to offer their impassioned letters to America, in a project envisioned by the online journal Terrain.org and collected, with 50 never-before-published letters, in Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy. In the inaugural piece in Terrain.org's Letters to America series, Alison Hawthorne Deming writes, "Think of the great spirit of inventiveness the Earth calls forth after each major disturbance it suffers. Be artful, inventive, and just, my friends, but do not be silent." Joining Deming are renowned artists and thinkers including Seth Abramson, Ellen Bass, Jericho Brown, Francisco Cantú, Kurt Caswell, Victoria Chang, Camille T. Dungy, Tarfia Faizullah, Blas Falconer, Attorney General Bob Ferguson, David Gessner, Katrina Goldsaito, Kimiko Hahn, Brenda Hillman, Jane Hirshfield, Linda Hogan, Pam Houston, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Karen An-hwei Lee, Christopher Merrill, Kathryn Miles, Kathleen Dean Moore, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Naomi Shihab Nye, Elena Passarello, Dean Rader, Scott Russell Sanders, Lauret Savoy, Gary Soto, Pete Souza, Kim Stafford, Sandra Steingraber, Arthur Sze, Scott Warren, Debbie Weingarten, Christian Wiman, Robert Wrigley, and others.
Dear America reflects the evolution of a moral panic that has emerged in the nation. More importantly, it is a timely congress of the personal and the political, a clarion call to find common ground and conflict resolution, all with a particular focus on the environment, social justice, and climate change. The diverse collection features personal essays, narrative journalism, poetry, and visual art from nearly 130 contributors—many pieces never before published—all literary reactions to the times we live in, with a focus on civic action and social change as we approach future elections. As Scott Minar writes, we must remain steadfast and look to the future: "Despair can bring us very low, or it can make us smarter and stronger than we have ever been before."

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    April 14, 2020

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781595349132

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781595349132
      • File size: 4539 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      March 27, 2020

      The ongoing COVID-19 virus provides added resonance to this noteworthy volume of letters, poems, and short essays by more than 130 writers and compiled by terrain.org editors Buntin, Elizabeth Dodd, and Derek Sheffield. This book was created in response to "the evolution of moral panic in America" engendered by President Donald Trump's election in November 2016. It is uncanny how many of the phrases used by these writers to describe the uncertainty of our collective political malaise in recent years ("some elements of this outcome I suspect will remain opaque," one contributor says of trying to understand why Hillary Clinton lost the election) can easily apply to our present lives of social isolation. Other standouts in this work include an imagined confrontation between Trump and environmentalist and former president Theodore Roosevelt, while another writer speaks of the murky, but real connection between "being whole" and comforting one another. This work should not be confused with Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam, an earlier anthology and a documentary film it inspired, though both works show the collective need to put feelings into words and share them. VERDICT Words have the power to describe injustices of the past, as well as to instill hopefulness for the future. This anthology is highly recommended for public libraries.--Ellen Gilbert, Princeton, NJ

      Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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