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Though Robin Wall Kimmerer and Evelyn White use different methods of nature writing, they both achieve the same goal: to challenge and provoke introspection regarding traditional western beliefs and notions surrounding nature. Kimmerer uses descriptive imagery and personification to establish a kinship between humans and nature to challenge the notion that nature is meant to be conquered, dominated, and exploited by white men. White draws on her own personal experiences with nature and uses descriptive imagery to challenge the notions that settlers, colonizers, white men really, are entitled to nature, the land, and its workers, which would include African Americans and any other social ‘other,’ and that nature may only be enjoyed by white men. Though these two writers use different methods of achieving their goals, which are individually different but fall under the umbrella of challenging western beliefs regarding nature, they may have more in common than what seems at first glance.

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Evelyn White uses descriptive imagery throughout her work to exemplify to her readers the experience of an African American woman in nature, to clarify why it may be a terrifying thought for the social ‘other’ to go out in nature. This stylistic choice humanizes not only White, but anyone else in the category of the social ‘other,’ therefore challenging the very traditional western notion that settlers, colonizers, white men, are entitled to dominance and control over nature, the land, and it’s “workers” (African Americans and other social ‘others’). Here, unexpectedly, Kimmerer and White have something in common, they both view nature and culture as intensely intertwined vines wrapped around each other rather than ontologically separate spheres.

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Green: Main argument and conclusion
Blue: Analyze
Purple: Contextualize
Red: Citations

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Nature as an Active Member of the Planet

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Nature as an Active Member of the Planet

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Kimmerer again questions the western notion that nature is meant to be dominated, conquered, and exploited by using her stylistic tool of establishing a kinship between humans, nature, and animals. By establishing this kinship, her readers are encouraged, if not forced, to view nature, “not as object, resource, or even separate sphere, but as active subject” (Menrisky). In coaxing her readers to view nature not as a separate sphere, but rather as an active subject coexisting within the human cultural sphere, Kimmerer is directly challenging them to think critically and provoking introspection about internalized western beliefs, specifically nature as an inanimate thing, undeserving of respect.

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In her work The Council of Pecans, Kimmerer uses personification of nature and animals, “If a tree just plodded along making a few nuts every year, they’d all get eaten and there would be no next generation of pecans. But given the high caloric value of nuts, the trees can’t afford this outpouring every year — they have to save up for it, as a family saves up for a special event” (Kimmerer 15). This personification creates feelings of similarity between humans and trees, equating pecan season to a special event that a family saves up for. Using personification as a tool in her work pushes Kimmerer’s readers to open their eyes to the possibility that humans and nature are not all that different.

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Evelyn White challenges the traditional Western belief that nature is primarily to be enjoyed, conquered, dominated, and exploited by white men by sharing her personal experience as an African American woman in nature. White was brave in ways that the traditional white western man could never understand by conquering her fear of nature rather than nature itself. For many African Americans and other racial/ethnic minorities or social ‘others,’ “Nineteenth-century slave narratives present countless examples in which slaves were identified with domestic animals and with the Southern landscape itself – as a prelude to exploiting both” (Menrisky), this history shared between them and nature may very well predispose them to fear nature.

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Robin Wall Kimmerer uses personification as a major literary tool in addition to her use of imagery throughout her work in order to establish a kinship between humans and nature or animals. By illustrating this kinship between humans, nature, and animals, Kimmerer makes nature and animals that much more difficult to be objectified by settlers, colonizers, or anyone else looking to exploit nature and animals for their own benefit. This is yet another stylistic tactic Kimmerer uses to achieve her goal of challenging the traditional western beliefs and notions surrounding nature. The traditional western beliefs consist mainly of dominating, conquering, and exploiting nature for the benefit of mankind.

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Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Council of the Pecans. Perusall, https://app.perusall.com/courses/engl-2635e-literature-and-the-environment-sec001-1233-858245901/kimmerer_the-council-of-pecans-680865604?assignmentId=uruc2gk3cjT9DrHTm&part=1. Accessed 2023.

Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Learning the Grammar of Animacy. Perusall, https://app.perusall.com/courses/engl-2635e-literature-and-the-environment-sec001-1233-858245901/kimmerer_learning-the-grammar-of-animacy-684535639?assignmentId=sEetpPW4RXY4mQP6Q&part=1. Accessed 2023.

Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Skywoman Falling. Perusall, https://app.perusall.com/courses/engl-2635e-literature-and-the-environment-sec001-1233-858245901/kimmerer_skywoman-falling-890458616?assignmentId=fBPcQi7dauQNj6YuP&part=1. Accessed 2023.

White, Evelyn. Black Women and the Wilderness. Perusall, https://app.perusall.com/courses/engl-2635e-literature-and-the-environment-sec001-1233-858245901/white_black-women-and-the-wilderness-770453773?assignmentId=MttiWgRiw3uL7CbS6&part=1. Accessed 2023.
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White also uses descriptive imagery, but in a slightly different way, she doesn’t just use the imagery for nature scenes, she uses it throughout her work, “I imagined myself being captured in a swampy backwater, my back ripped open and bloodied by the whip’s lash. I cradled an ancestral mother, broken and keening as her baby was snatched from her arms and sold down the river” (White 382). White clearly allows herself to use descriptive imagery for any and every part of her writing, not solely the nature scenes. This stylistic feature promotes her chosen variation of nature writing, which is to focus on the experience of the ‘other’ in and with nature.

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While White and Kimmerer certainly have different approaches to the nature writing genre, they do share an important stylistic component that nearly all nature writers share, descriptive imagery. Kimmerer for example uses all kinds of sensory imagery in her work, from tactile to visual to auditory “Heat waves shimmer above the grasses, the air heavy and white and ringing with the buzz of cicadas” (Kimmerer 11). Even though she utilizes many different types of imagery, she uses it mainly for one purpose; to describe, embody, and depict nature through her words. The way Kimmerer uses imagery is supportive of her chosen type of nature writing which focuses on primarily nature itself.

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Eveyln White takes a different approach in her work, focusing more on the type of nature writing that encompasses the experiences of nature from the perspective of the societal ‘other’. In this case, White describes her experience of nature through her own perspective, that of an African American, “While the river’s roar gave me a certain comfort and my heart warmed when I gazed at the sun-dappled trees out of a classroom window, I didn’t want to get closer. I was certain that if I ventured outside to admire a meadow or to feel the cool ripples in a stream, I’d be taunted, attacked, raped, maybe even murdered because of the color of my skin” (White 378).

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Robin Wall Kimmerer uses nature writing as seen in its earlier form which “views nature as a kinship structure in its relationship with humans” (Menrisky). This type of nature writing is common among indigenous peoples and native Ameicans, which becomes clear upon reading some of Kimmerer’s work, “Soon only little muskrat was left. [...] His small legs flailed as he worked his way downward and he was gone a very long time. [...] He had given his life to aid this helpless human” (Kimmerer 4). This quote from Kimmerer’s Skywoman Falling exemplifies the way native and indigenous peoples viewed nature and their environment as something to be grateful for, to not take for granted, and to respect rather than to “conquer” as many other people in the world see it.

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Nature writing can be defined in many ways, for example, “[Nature writing] features ‘the writer’s movement from human society toward a state of solitude in nature,’ frequently gestures to ‘unmediated’ observation and detailed description to rhetorically bolster the impression that what is described is real rather than artificial [and] demonstrates ‘fascination with the wild as the acultural or even anti-cultural’” (Menrisky). This definition of nature writing refers to the styles of the earlier writers like Thoreau, Muir, Leopold and others. As the genre grew and gained popularity, its definition evolved, “‘What is one’s primary experience of land and place is not a place apart but rather indigenous? What if it is urban or indentured or exiled or (im)migrant or toxic?’, to define ‘nature writing’ as anything that excludes these experiences does not reveal a ‘lack’ of writing, but reflects, instead, a societal structure of inclusion and exclusion based on othered difference–whether by ‘race’, culture, class, or gender’” (Menrisky).

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Robin Wall Kimmerer and Evelyn White have the same goal in their writing however they use different methods of nature writing to accomplish that goal. The goal is to challenge traditional western notions and beliefs of nature.