When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom, History, and America's Black Botanical Legacy

In this powerful episode, Dr. Beronda Montgomery invites us to reimagine the relationship between science, history, and the living world. Drawing from her book When Trees Testify, she reveals how trees are not just part of the landscape, but witnesses to history—holding stories of resilience, survival, and resistance within Black communities.

Through a unique blend of plant biology, personal narrative, and historical reflection, this conversation traces the deep connections between Black botanical knowledge and the lived experiences of enslaved people and their descendants. From pecans to sycamores to oaks, these trees become archives of memory, revealing how plants were used for food, medicine, and liberation.

This episode challenges dominant narratives of science by centering Black ecological knowledge as both rigorous and transformative. It asks us to consider what it means to heal from land-based trauma, and how reconnecting with the natural world can be an act of remembrance and justice.

This is not just about plants—it is about history, survival, and the knowledge systems that have always sustained communities, even when they were erased.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Pinya Soul Podcast with Dr. Jessica Fernandez. This episode features Dr. Beranda Montgomery. Dr. Montgomery is a writer, researcher, and scholar whose work centers on how individuals understand, respond to, and are shaped by the environments they inhabit. Her research explores how photoshentic organisms like plants and cyanobacteria respond to life while also extending these ideas into mentoring, leadership, and how people thrive. She's the author of Lessons from Plants, published in 2021, and her most recent book, When Trees Testify, Science, Wisdom, and History and America's Black Botanical Legacy, was recently published in 2026. This is a conversation you don't want to miss. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Today we have the honor of interviewing Dr. Viranda Montgomery. And I really love your book you wrote When Trees Testify. So I wanted to start off the interview by asking you to tell us a little bit about your book and what inspired you to write this amazing book.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Well, thank you so much for the invitation to be in conversation. Always love when I have a chance to talk with you. Um, this particular book uh really is kind of rooted in an experience that I had visiting a former plantation in Charleston, South Carolina with my sister and son. So we were just on vacation. Um, and both of them are really uh love black history of all sorts. And so in that particular location, of course, with the history of Charleston being associated with chattel slavery, they wanted to visit a former plantation. And I was a little hesitant just because there's so much that can happen in those spaces in terms of whether people are respecting them, as I wouldn't hope, in terms of them being tourist sites. Um but when we got to one of them and are walking around, my son was very thoughtfully trying to point out plants and trees because he knows that's my love. And one of the trees that we encountered, the cultural guide said that this uh live oak, the McLeod oak, was about 600 years old. And so I became fascinated in that moment as a plant scientist with the science of these beings that could live for centuries. But also recognizing the fact that that tree would have been there at the time people were enslaved on the land. It just seemed like my interest in plant science collided with African American history and my own family having roots in the South. I've been descended from people who were enslaved. It just felt like this unique opportunity for several interests and my personal story to come together that ultimately led to me not just exploring that one tree, but other trees and asking what the intersection might be with African American history in the US.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Wow, thank you so much for sharing. And as we were previously discussing, my parents now live in Arkansas and become familiar with that environment. And one of the things that I noticed, especially when walking outside when it's dark, obviously it's known as the natural state because we're surrounded by trees. Yes. Is this sense of solitude and I will say despair or depression that comes from the trees? And for anybody who has a connection to the environment, you can often see how plants also talk to us, obviously, not like in the human form. So I wanted to ask you how do trees and landscapes hold on to those dark histories and memories, especially as you kind of in a way also listen to them as you were writing about these and also embedding that tree integrations as well.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

Yeah, such a beautiful question. You know, Arkansas is known as the natural state, and in in so many ways, is such a beautiful state naturally, in terms of the lakes and the rivers and the and the greenery. And so it is a very beautiful state. But I agree with you, there are times when being out in nature as an African-American woman, you are aware of the history. And I think mostly my my parents grew up in the rural part of Arkansas. So whenever we were at my grandparents' home, particularly that feeling that you described, by the time the sun went down, it felt almost scary sometimes to be out in nature, just because, you know, the rural parts of Arkansas sometimes are the ones with the greatest association with racism and xenophobia and all of those things. And so there were times when walking from my grandmother's house to my aunt's house was with literally two blocks, felt so dangerous once the sun went down. I think over time, because I love being outside so much. And I talk in the book about how my siblings and I spent so much time outside, I had to come to learn two things that nature is a beautiful place, but because of the way humans are, it can start to feel dangerous. And so I try to remember that when I'm out and you have that, you know, you look at trees that you know might have been the site of lynching or might have been the site where someone was beat or any of those things, you have to remember that that association with nature is because of the way humans have used nature. And I try to always remember when I have those feelings, not to give up the feeling that nature in and of itself is beautiful as gifted to us, and that when it feels heavy like that, you have to remember where that comes from. So I try to remember that, but you're absolutely right. There are times where it can feel you feel the weight of the experiences that those trees are carrying, the memories that they're carrying. And you want to honor that and also be able to recognize the beauty of the tree in and of itself as a living being and can.

SPEAKER_01 5:28

Yeah, thank you so much for sharing. And another thing that I really loved about your book is that you actually weave in the histories. And often we talk about history, people oftentimes assume that it took years, it's like hundreds of years ago. In Little Rock, we know that the desegregation movement, especially in schools, didn't happen that long ago. A lot of the Little Rock nines, I believe, are still alive. I think the most recent one passed away. When I taught in Little Rock, Arkansas for a year before coming to graduate school, oftentimes teachers will negatively, I will say, make assumptions, right, as to why there wasn't much parent involvement. And it took me to actually mention that, you know, a lot of these children's grandparents didn't were not allowed to step foot in in the schools that we were now teaching in. So I wanted to ask you, why is it that when we talk about these histories, especially these dark histories that oftentimes the United States tries to remove itself from, people assume it happened hundreds or millions of years ago when in reality it has happened within our lifetime? What is it that we try to push away from that so that we don't acknowledge that histories are more recent than they actually um Yes.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

It's such an Yeah, such an important important question because that question in and of itself is how ultimately I ended up with so many family stories in the book. Because it was important to provide people touch points to remember how recent it is. And the fact that my parents grew up in segregation, you know, my father just passed away a few years ago, my mother's still living and healthy, these are people who live through that. And so sometimes I think by design, you've you you will hear historians talk about how a lot of the pictures from the 1960s civil rights movement are published in black and white. Because when you see black and white, it gives you a sense that something is old. And so, in a lot of ways, by design, we try to distance ourselves from that history because we if we acknowledge, and you're right up, I think it was last year, I was at an event with seven of the Little Rock Nine who were in attendance. If we understand that they're alive, then the white parents, the white people, the children and parents and families that were there terrorizing them are still alive. So when we make it sound ancient, we actually remove people who are still living away from the accountability of participating in those moments. And I think that I think a lot about Ruby Bridges, right? The little girl that people see, she's on social media. Like you can interact with Ruby Bridges. She's not that much older than I am in a lot of ways. And so I think it's important, one of the things, even though I am not one who thought I would write something that even approached a memoir, I think it's important to share stories that someone you know and can engage with has a very real connection to this history. We're still living out this history. But I think we think it's so old because that's the way we talk about it, to remove ourselves from the idea that the memories of that are not just memories, but the people who were a part of that, some of them are still here and having impact on our current decisions and the ways in which our society is shaped.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

Thank you so much for mentioning that and also emphasizing the black and white pictures, because I hadn't thought about that, but all black and white, and you're like, there used to be color film. And then obviously there are so many things that I loved about your book. I rave about it. But one of the lines that made me excite, you know, jump in excitement was when you talked about enslaved African women carrying critical indigenous knowledge of irrigation and rice cultivation. And I think that oftentimes, even being in indigenous spaces and talking about indigenity, we often dismiss that also black folks had that indigenous knowledge. Obviously, this is why this community was enslaved, because they didn't necessarily have to get any training on how to cultivate or steward the land. So I wanted to ask you how do you see your work helping readers rethink those connections, especially in the context of land, labor, and whose knowledge has historically been erased, especially as a plant biologist and a scientist in this field?

SPEAKER_00 9:30

You know, I think I try to do it carefully to both acknowledge the truth of the indigenous knowledge that came from the African continent and also to honor ways in which my own thinking about this has been inspired by Indigenous scholars, Robin Walkimmer, your work, others, and to be inspired by it, but not to overtake honoring, you know, the indigenous knowledge and expertise on this land. But my hope is that by seeing the parallels in it, we might see some of the similar triumphs and struggles that our groups have had. And, you know, there are lots of examples how Black and Indigenous people have collaborated and worked together in this country. But I think we need to revisit some of those and find ways that we see parallels in our experiences because what we're being challenged with in this country is going to require those of us who have been really abused by this country, who have been exploited by this country to see our commonalities and to both honor the differences of our experiences, but to allow the commonalities to hopefully allow us to see ways that that would help us move towards a more just future, a more inclusive future. And so for me, there's no way to really try to acknowledge the full experience of my people. I think a lot too about something I wish I could quote a verbatim, but Imani Perry, the writer, talks about how when you look at what happened in this country, her and others talk about how really indigenous people were run off lands that then but African Americans were brought into in terms of enslavement. And so we're connected in so many ways. And to honor that and acknowledge it, I think is a critical step towards us moving together in terms of a full acknowledgement of our places in this country and hopefully continued calls for justice in acknowledging that.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

Yeah, thank you so much for sharing. Another thing is I noticed that you dedicated this book to your mom. And I really loved how you weaved and her stories and also some of the memories that you shared with your mom. And I wanted you to share maybe one memory of her, especially one that's connected to trees or the natural world that feels especially meaningful to you so that our audience can find that connection with maternal instincts in.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

I mean, I think there are so many because although both of my parents really loved outdoors and vegetable gardening and landscaping, my mother loved outdoors and indoor plants. So my whole understanding of plants in my life, my mom is kind of surrounded by those. And I think, you know, in terms of trees, one of the stories I love so much, it's actually mentioned in the book, is how when I got fascinated with apple seeds germinating and what it looked like to have a little tree seedling, she said, let's, you know, let's do the experiment. And I always felt like I'm the youngest of five, and I always say by the time my mom got to me, she could have been exhausted. But I was her kid who was always, why can't I experiment? What can I learn? And she would always kind of go along for the ride. So I remember when I was germinating those little apple seeds and then they started to grow, she was right there with me, excited about each step of it. Um, in high school, I often did science fair projects that were about plants, and she would always be right there. And so plants and, you know, that little experiment I did, I was about four or five when I did that one, have really always kind of been a place where she and I could meet in terms of our curiosity. I mean, so it felt like after I dedicated my first book to my dad, who had passed away right before it came out, it felt like a real invitation to honor her impact, which has been really central to a lot of my understanding of plants and understanding how these relationships that individuals can build with plants, sometimes my mom is better at growing plants than I am. I have a PhD, but her relationship building and intuitive nature has always inspired me of what really can happen if we're paying attention to the other living beings in our space and have respect for them and offer them. So thank you for allowing me to reflect on her in terms of that.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

And thank you for sharing because oftentimes people always ask us, right, especially being in academia, who's the best professor you have ever had? And obviously you also say it's your parents, right? So going back to the indigenous knowledge, especially within the black communities, we know that colonization and obviously slavery fractured those relationships. And my next question is what do you think we can do as a community to recover or remember that knowledge now, especially given that obviously, especially the times that we're living in where no DEI or anything that's other that doesn't necessarily benefit the Y agenda is being even more suppressed, especially in educational systems?

SPEAKER_00 14:09

Yes, it's such an important thing to think about. You know, I think about my hope is that the writing that I've done, like in When Trees Testify and Lessons from Plants, the writing that you've done. I think about Chanda Prescott was just talking with her. They have the physicist, the theoretical physicist, who also writes. I think having these examples of people who have imagined that their path of education wasn't just about the traditional rewards that you would get from education. And so I've had a traditional career as a scientist in a lot of ways. Chonda's a professor, but there are ways in which we have embraced the fact that our being in these spaces and getting access to this knowledge, a big part of it for me is to be in a place where I can ask the question have we acknowledged how African Americans have trib contributed to agriculture in this country? I think about your most recent book. I think the ways in which you have shown that pursuing advanced education is not just about the work that you're doing for yourself. And yes, you're helping contribute to a life, but it's also about making a platform to say indigenous people have been contributing to conversations about climate change for a long time. And so I think it takes some showing different examples of what it can be to show up in these spaces and say, I'm not just here to perform legitimacy with papers and grants the way someone else is. I truly believe now that my getting a PhD in plant biology was in part for me to be at a place where I would look, study photosynthesis, but be able to look at a tree and say our ancestors' breath is captured in the tree. And other people could say this, right? My grandmother or other could say it. Um, but I truly believe that sometimes we do the hard work of getting a platform to really platform the work of all the generations that came before us. And I hope that that inspires people to think there are so many different ways to get to honoring the legacies that we're carrying forward. And there's so many legacies to name, right? We talked earlier about the contribution of women to rice. I talked in the book about an enslaved man being behind the founding of the pecan industry, um, and many other examples. And some of those examples would fall aside, apart from there being someone who shows up with our identities, wanting to reclaim those first for our own legacies, right? Um, but then to say this is a larger contribution that is a legacy in this country as well.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

Yeah, that's beautifully said. And you do a great job, right, of making sure that you uplift the communities. And one of the questions that I have, especially now, um, something that I notice in our youth, right? It's that it's harder for them to remove themselves from this individualistic lens. Obviously, that's because social media, just the society in general, right, is pushing us, right, to look more at the individualistic lens as opposed to the communal. What kind of advice do you have for the youth to break from those cycles and then learn that cycle that you have to put yourself first before you uplift your communities?

SPEAKER_00 17:02

I think if we figure that out, we can really transform our spaces. I mean, I think one of the things is that we have to first acknowledge it for ourselves. And it's easy to get caught up in these traps of I remember when I got my PhD, when I was a postdoc, when I got my first faculty position, in all of those cases, they wanted to celebrate my being the first. And it's easy to get caught up in, oh, look at me, I accomplished this as a first. But I actually know that even I wouldn't have made it across the finish line without my family stepping in. Like it's our degree. When I was able to get tenure, is because of the students that I was able to work with. So I think we have to first model it in our lives of recognizing when we're being asked to fall into that fallacy of the individual success model and to push back. So every time I get an award that's in my name, my question is who contributed to this? And when they say we're going to celebrate it, I'm showing up with the crowd of people who contributed to that. I think in the book, one of the ways I try to do it is by just acknowledging that though people keep trying to tell me, oh, you're a first-generation botanist, I may be the first one with the PhD in botany in my family, but I come from a long line of botanists. And it's that legacy that allowed me to get to the place that I was. And so I think we have to first model it for ourselves and then look for places and spaces where, whether it's writing a book, whether it's doing the community-based work, I think a lot about a friend of mine, uh, Tori Weaston Sarden, she does mentoring work in the Empire in California. And she's done beautiful work. She works with youth, youth of color and queer youth. And often when she gets invited to a keynote, she accepts it and then puts a group of the students on the stage, right? To be the ones presenting the work. And so I think we have to think about places that we can demonstrate that we see our success as communal and use what platforms and opportunities we get to do that, even if it's for me to say, nope, I'm not a first generation botanist, and I can name those in my family and other places. So I think we have to model it. It's easy to get caught up in that individual success model, but it's simply a fallacy. It's a fallacy in most cases, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

Yeah, thank you so much for sharing. I think I asked that question, right? Because one of the teachings that I got from your book is that we need to kind of live like trees, right? Where trees are in the forest. And that was something that I took for book out of because we are living like solo plants, living, you know, by just not necessarily looking at our surroundings, right? Trees too. Absolutely. Another question that I have for you, especially the end of your book, right? You celebrate black excellence, and I really love that because oftentimes we can fall into despair or like in the doom, especially in the times that we're living in. And one of the things you mentioned was Black Botness Week and how that was a successful campaign on Twitter when it used to be Twitter. So, my question is for young people who are feeling despair or sometimes hopelessness right now, what message do you hope they take from that that celebration and from your work, especially your book?

SPEAKER_00 20:01

Yeah. You know, that Black Botanist Week celebration was so transformative for me. And I remember it followed Black Birders Week, which was like the first big week after the Christian Cooper incident in New York City. But Tanisha Williams, who she's now a professor at the University of Georgia, after Black Birders Week, she reached out and said, Are there any botanists who would want to do a similar week? And we ended up with a group of 12, like we were the original founders, and it was intergenerational and it was across the globe. So we had members on several continents, and I probably was the oldest one, but we had people who were still students. And part of the way we set it up was to really invite a broad range of people. You don't have to have a degree, but you love plants and you want to celebrate people in this space. And so coming into the work from that inclusive place and saying, how do we make the work as open as we can was transformative. The intergenerational nature of the work was so critically important. And I think so much of the work that you have to do to really make a difference needs to be that, largely as accessible as it can be and intergenerational. And because there are young people often have ideas that I'm never gonna think of. And then sometimes there are hard things where you need someone who can say, I've had this experience in this place, let me go and take the punch, you know, for the group. But also inviting people to engage from joy and to really join us in our joy for being a botanist, to acknowledge the difficult parts, but inviting people to meet you where you're curious and enthusiastic in an intergenerational group was just transformative. And even the hard work that we have to do in this moment of asking questions about whether our country in the US is going to remain a democracy requires intergenerational knowledge. Um, I think it requires it's hard, as you say, just to only be in the trauma. We have to both acknowledge that even in the midst of enslavement, even in the midst of being disenfranchised, if you were, you know, indigenous people in this country. We still found moments to have collective joy even as we were navigating the trauma. And I think we have to draw on that model to understand that that's what allowed them to survive so that we generations later could still survive. And so thinking about ways for that. That's why it was important for me to end the book by saying, yeah, there's a lot of trauma in thinking about the role of trees in agriculture and the African-American experience in the U.S. But in the middle of that, people still danced. People still had joy at having, you know, children and their family members at times. And so really finding ways that you do the hard work, but you do it with people that you're committed to and can confine a collective sense of commitment, a collective sense of purpose, but also a collective sense of being committed to the fullness of ourselves, including finding pockets of joy.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

Yeah, thank you so much for sharing. And I guess my question is like, how did you find joy, especially in writing this book? Because a lot of the histories right that you're writing are not easy to digest, especially given that it's something that hits our homes, our parents, our communities. So, how did you find joy in writing the histories that need to be told but are hard for us to tell at times?

SPEAKER_00 23:15

I think part of it has been what I've had to do in my life is to understand what the definition of joy is for me, what the definition of hope is for me. And so I think a lot of times people think about joy and hope as this thing where you know something is gonna work itself out. But for me, joy and hope are legacies. And I often think about the fact that if my ancestors who were enslaved, my parents who were raised during Jim Crow and segregation, if they found joy and hope in those moments, then joy and hope become a legacy. And so even though writing the book was hard, I took joy in the fact that I had the visibility platform and science knowledge to do it in a way that honored my ancestors' legacy. And, you know, in parts of the book, I found out things I never knew, like the story in the chapter on Willow about my grandfather being five years old during a massacre. We were not aware of that. And so it sounds like a crazy thing to have joy that you understood that was your grandfather's experience, but to understand that he was a part of that experience, endured it and survived it, and still raised a family, including my mother, who allowed me to be in the world, you find some joy in being the one who can honor what he endured for us to be in this moment. So I think I've had to understand that joy and hope are legacies. And one of the other joys in writing this is that now my son and my nieces and nephews and future generations and our family have a chance to understand our full life and the full contributions of African Americans. And so then they have an opportunity to opt in to continuing the joy of hope and legacy. I tell my son that, you know, we are, as much as there are many challenges in our lives compared to our ancestors, we have a lot of privilege. I mean, he grew up with a mom who's a professor. You know, we have a lot of privilege. And we can't, it would be a shame for us to be the ones that break this intergenerational legacy of joy and hope. And so part of it is understanding the responsibility to be joyful, the responsibility to be hopeful and to find so the Apple chapter shows, you know, ways in which African Americans use their agricultural knowledge to pursue freedom. And so finding those things that you can hold on to that help you be a responsible link in the intergeneration, generational legacy of hope and joy is important for me.

SPEAKER_01 25:37

Yeah, thank you so much for sharing because I think oftentimes there is the responsibility that we need to maintain to uplift joy and hope. Another tree that you mentioned a lot in your book was the mulberry tree, and also mentioned the importance of it and especially in the African American history and how it appears a lot in literature. And I wanted to ask you if you can share more about that for our listeners and also talk about what the mulberry tree represents to you and why it carries so much cultural weight.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

I love that you pulled that one out. You know, when I talk to people sometime, I asked them, you know, if you if you were going to have a book about trees in African American history, which species would you think are gonna be in there? Mulberry is often not one of them. But in thinking about which trees I wanted to include, there are these ways in which mulberry shows up in literature. And so to me, those were signposts that it has this really relevant history. And after thinking about some of the writers that I love, where I see mulberry show up in their work, Tony Morrison and others, my question became what do they know about mulberry that I don't know that allows them to link it? And so certainly I had become aware of it when I had visited Monticello, where um that's the former um place in Virginia, where they have a mulberry roll right there. And so I'm like, mulberry is really interesting. I had not been quite aware myself that mulberry had had an important role during enslavement and that there was a time before cotton became the predominant crop that the U.S. had tried for a while to have a silk-making industry, a sericultural industry. And they built this off the fact that it would be feasible in the U.S. because they had free labor. And so it's linked with the fact that there was chattel slavery in the U.S., this idea. But mulberry is also critically important because it had been used in Africa for silk, it had been used in Africa for like medicinal purposes. Um, so it had been used to treat high blood pressure, it had been used to treat dysentery and other things. Um, but it also had been used in the US and in like a paper pulp industry. So there were all these ways in which the mulberry tree had this connection with enslavement in terms of the pursuit of industry, but also this knowledge that enslaved people brought in terms of understanding that it would have been used for artwork and face painting and all of these things. So I became deeply fascinated with it. And once it was clear that the book was also going to have personal stories that helped us understand the kind of current-day reverberations of enslavement and racism, I had a deeply personal story about Mulberry as well, in terms of a mulberry tree that had been a part of a friendship I had had with a young white woman when I was in elementary school. And so Mulberry had all of those different touch points and really made a, I thought, a very compelling character per se.

SPEAKER_01 28:22

Yeah, thank you so much for sharing. Because yeah, I also love the plants that are not necessarily as romanticized, right? Yes. So that's why I think I I picked that one up. Yes. And my other question is that you mentioned many remedies and forms of essential knowledge that were passed down to you. And I guess I wanted to ask you um, how did colonization and slavery fracture some of that knowledge? And how are you passing down that knowledge to the future generations in your lineage?

SPEAKER_00 28:49

Yeah, it's so interesting because I think so much knowledge has been fractured, right? And I think it's why, you know, I first heard so much about the important knowledge that enslaved women brought around the rice industry in the US myself a few years ago when I was reading, but then also it's been represented in like popular multi-documentary series like High on the Hog, right? And so I think there are so many ways in which when people hear this, they are like, what? This is very fascinating, which means that there's this whole wealth of knowledge that's been critically important that was used in the US that we've lost. And then I think about all the things that we got disrupted from. You know, when I think about the ways in which my grandmother and some other senior women would use plants to heal us, I just think, how much did we lose when we were brought here against our will and the plants that we used to use to contribute to our health, we no longer had access to them. Um, and once you have at don't have access to them, it's easy to lose the knowledge. You know, we see languages disappearing in many cultures because you don't get to use it. And I think that that language of understanding how you're in relationship with nature for healing and health, we lost a lot of that. My hope is that once we start to learn stories like the ones that are shared in this book or shared in documentary series like High on the Hog, that people become more interested in what else don't we know? And so, you know, when I've had chances to visit West Africa or East Africa, I'm always looking for is there something that I'm seeing here that would have been something that we that looks similar to something that I see, but we they know more about it. Um, and so I think that curiosity, uh, but having examples that drive our curiosity and feed our curiosity, I think are really critically important. And I hope that, you know, having examples, that's why it was so important to me to write a book for the public. I could have written an academic book, but I wanted that curiosity to get in the hands of the public so that we might have more people interested in what was lost and that idea of saying, Kofa, how do we go back and get it, you know, and bring it forward?

SPEAKER_01 30:47

Yeah, thank you. That was very beautiful, right? Especially when we are pushed to write more academic papers or butts. And you're like, that's not gonna fall in the in the hands of our community members. And I guess um, my one of my last questions is like, if if there's one teaching you want readers to walk away after reading your book, what is that one teaching you want them to walk away with?

SPEAKER_00 31:09

You know, become one of the things that I've heard from people who've been reading the book is that it causes them to look at trees differently. And I think if we were able to have a greater appreciation for how trees and the natural world are so deeply intertwined with our lives, and that people became curious even about the trees in their neighborhood or the trees in their yard in a way that it caused them to look at nature differently. I think we have got to rethink our relationship with nature to get answers to the biggest problems in this world. And so I would be fine with that. If it got us to think more about the contributions of African Americans to this country and ask why we are so desperate to erase history, I just think about the fact that there's so much freedom making in history. We always want to talk about the resilience, but there's a lot of freedom making, subversion, and all of that in history. So I hope people will look at trees differently and also be curious about African American history and what we're leaving behind in wanting to erase it or insisting on erasing it as a country.

SPEAKER_01 32:14

Yeah, thank you for sharing because one of the things that I always think about is how trees are also matriarchal and matrilineal. And that used to be something that all of our communities used to follow, but obviously now patriarchy is very embedded. So I wanted to end it with some of some fun um questions. And my first question is if you were a tree or if you could describe yourself in a tree, what tree would you be?

SPEAKER_00 32:37

That is such a good, good question. I think about, I think it's only now because I'm seeing them all the time, but I love magnolia trees. I think that they have such beautiful flowers that often invite people to get closer to them. And I would want to live a life that would people would want to be drawn to engage. And sometimes it's the big showy flowers, not always, but I think a lot about that in terms of, and they're always so present in my memories of the South.

SPEAKER_01 33:06

Thank you. And then my last question is do you believe, um, believe in Bigfoot or the Swasquash? Have you encountered them or seen them at all?

SPEAKER_00 33:15

I have not, but I tell you, I have been in the forest um at nights where you hear things that sound like they are much, much larger than anything I would not be afraid of. And I have learned to live by the principle, I think it was Tressie McMillan cotton. She was talking about something else, but she said, I don't want the limits of my imagination to make someone else's um existence be impossible. And so I don't want the limits of my imagination uh to let me think that there's not a Sasquatch. And so if I encounter him, he will understand that I respected him or her.

SPEAKER_01 33:45

Thank you so much. And thank you for joining us. And we're gonna link the the where everybody can purchase the book. And thank you again for joining us. It was a pleasure talking to you.

SPEAKER_00 33:55

Thank you so much. It was a fabulous conversation, and thank you for everything that you do. It's so awe inspiring.

SPEAKER_01 34:00

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 34:01

Thanks.