Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against "The Apocalypse" - Paperback

by Emily Raboteau (Author)

Finalist for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award
Finalist for the ASLE Ecocritical Book Award
One of Time's "100 Must-Read Books of 2024"
Named one of The New York Times' "15 New Books to Read in March"

Award-winning author and critic Emily Raboteau crafts a powerfully moving meditation on race, climate, environmental justice--and what it takes to find shelter.

Lessons for Survival is a probing series of pilgrimages from the perspective of a mother struggling to raise her children to thrive without coming undone in an era of turbulent intersecting crises.

With camera in hand, Raboteau goes in search of birds, fluttering in the air or painted on buildings, and city parks where her children may safely play while avoiding pollution, pandemics, and the police. She ventures abroad to learn from Indigenous peoples, and in her own family and community, she discovers the most intimate examples of resilience. Raboteau bears witness to the inner life of Black womanhood, motherhood, the brutalities and possibilities of cities, while celebrating the beauty and fragility of nature. This innovative work of reportage and autobiography stitches together multiple stories of protection, offering a profound sense of hope.

Author Biography

Emily Raboteau writes at the intersection of social and environmental justice, race, climate change, and parenthood. Her previous books are Searching for Zion (2013), winner of an American Book Award and finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the cult classic novel, The Professor's Daughter (2005). Since the release of the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, she has focused on writing about the climate crisis. A contributing editor at Orion Magazine and a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, Raboteau's essays have recently appeared in New Yorker, the New York Times, New York Magazine, The Nation, and elsewhere. Her distinctions include the Deadline Club Award in Feature Reporting from the Society of Professional Journalists' New York chapter, and grants and fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Lannan Foundation. She serves regularly as nonfiction faculty at the Bread Loaf Environmental Writing Conference and is a full professor at the City College of New York (CUNY). She lives in the Bronx with her husband, the novelist Victor LaValle, and their two children.