Camille T. Dungy Libri

Camille Dungy has a garden of verses that spring up with the sunshine or hide with you in the dusk. "Cleaning" best sums up What To Eat, What To Drink, What To Leave For Poison, an amazing poetry collection, when Dungy pens "understanding clearly/what is fatal to the body./I only understand too late/what can be fatal to the heart." Take an ice tea and sit on the veranda or take a glass of wine and prop up in bed but whatever way you like your poetry, this book is a must.— Nikki Giovanni.

Suck on the Marrow is a historical narrative, revolving around six main characters and set in mid-19th century Virginia and Philadelphia. The book traces the experiences of fugitive slaves, kidnapped Northern-born blacks, and free people of color, exploring the interdependence between plantation life and life in Northern and Southern American towns and illuminating the connections between the successes and difficulties of a wide range of Americans, free and slave, black and white, Northern and Southern. This neo-slave narrative treats the truths of lives touched by slavery with reverence but is not afraid to question the ways the old stories have too often been told. In addition to creating new stories, Suck on the Marrow develops new ways of telling those tales. 

The narrative explores the experiences of a working mother and poet-lecturer navigating America with her young daughter, highlighting their identities as black women. Through vivid observations, the author captures her daughter's journey of language and exploration, while reflecting on the historical contexts that shape their travels. From the contrasting landscapes of San Francisco to the haunting memories of slave-trading ports in Ghana, the journey intertwines personal growth with a profound awareness of history and place.

A seminal work that expands how we talk about the natural world and the environment as National Book Critics Circle Criticism finalist Camille T. Dungy diversifies her garden to reflect her heritage. In Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden, poet and scholar Camille T. Dungy recounts the seven-year odyssey to diversify her garden in the predominately white community of Fort Collins, Colorado. When she moved there in 2013, with her husband and daughter, the community held strict restrictions about what residents could and could not plant in their gardens. In resistance to the homogenous policies that limited the possibility and wonder that grows from the earth, Dungy employs the various plants, herbs, vegetables, and flowers she grows in her garden as metaphor and treatise for how homogeneity threatens the future of our planet, and why cultivating diverse and intersectional language in our national discourse about the environment is the best means of protecting it. Definitive and singular, Soil functions at the nexus of nature writing, environmental justice, and prose to encourage you to recognize the relationship between the peoples of the African diaspora and the land on which they live, and to understand that wherever soil rests beneath their feet is home.

Camille T. Dungy's work serves as a survival guide for navigating love, loss, and nature in the modern world. She examines the complex relationship between humanity and the environment, highlighting the destruction wrought by human existence alongside our own fragility. Through a blend of fury and tenderness, Dungy uncovers the myriad ways we contribute to and suffer from the catastrophes that shape our lives, prompting readers to reflect on their connection to the planet.

Poems about birth, death, and ecosystems of nature and power