Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy
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.”
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Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy
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.”
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Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy

Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy

Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy
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Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy

Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy

Overview

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.”

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781595349132
Publisher: Trinity University Press
Publication date: 04/14/2020
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
File size: 5 MB

About the Author

Simmons Buntin is the author of the poetry collections Riverfall and Bloom; the co-author, with Ken Pirie, of Unsprawl: Remixing Spaces as Places; and the co-editor, with Elizabeth Dodd and Derek Sheffield, of Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy. He is the editor-in-chief of Terrain.org, the president and director of the board of Terrain Publishing, and the director of marketing and communications at the University of Arizona. He lives in Tucson.

Read an Excerpt


Introduction
Dear Reader,

When Alison Hawthorne Deming sent me her letter to America a week after the 2016 Presidential election, I had just hung up the phone with my daughter, a college sophomore, biologist-in-training, and young woman who just voted in her first presidential election—and now found herself devastated. It was the fourth or fifth time we talked since the election, and as her father I felt that I was in the position of talking her down from a ledge. A ledge on which we both teetered.

Alison’s letter arrived just in time. A response to the shaken American landscape so vividly illuminated by Donald Trump’s win, it was written—she told me in offering the letter for publication in Terrain.org—to encourage herself and others as we reeled with the disruption in our sense of national well-being.

I forwarded it to my daughter—and we stepped back from the ledge. But as we all know, the mountain is crumbling, and so we remain on that ledge, politically and perhaps literally.

After scheduling the piece for publication the very next day, I knew that Alison’s wasn’t the only voice that needed a venue. Likewise I knew that Alison’s response wasn’t the only wisdom we’d need as the administration turned over and America hurtled into the dark unknown. So co-editors Elizabeth Dodd, Derek Sheffield, and I invited other writers, artists, designers, politicians, and thinkers to offer their own letters. And they did, in numbers and with sustained energy that surprised us all.

Since publishing Alison’s letter on November 17, 2016, we have added more than 160 additional responses in what one reader has called “the evolution of moral panic in America,” a congress of the personal and political, with a prominent focus on place and environmental and social justice.

In the book you now hold, we’ve combined some of these original letters with new contributions. They offer diverse and powerful responses to a shifting American and global landscape, running from shock through grief, truth-telling, and resolve. They acknowledge, too, that what for many is a suddenly changed America has, for many others, never been a country of equity or justice.

When I talk with my daughter today, and as we continue to lament a President, his administration, and representatives who disregard the Constitution, let alone common decency, we turn back to Alison’s letter and her charge: “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.” The voices in this essential collection are anything but silent. Indeed, they are voices of hope, habitat, defiance, and most importantly, democracy. Lend your ears, and then your own voice.

Patriotically yours,

Simmons Buntin

Editor-in-Chief, Terrain.org

Dear America by Alison Hawthorne Deming

The heat is just beginning to wane here in Arizona in the November ending the hottest five years on record. I’ve had to adjust my inner thermostat too, living here in terrain associated in many of the world’s religions with spiritual testing. The election results threaten to undermine every cause that I as an educator, poet, and essayist have worked for in the past 50 years: women’s rights, civil rights, environmental justice, science literacy, civil discourse, and empathy—and underlying all, the informed and reflective thinking required for democracy to thrive.
Only 25 percent of the American electorate voted for Donald Trump. That means 75 percent of Americans did not vote for deportation of Mexicans, banning of Muslims, denigrating and denying science, wasting this glorious planet for the sake of personal and corporate gain, hate speech, racist and misogynist words and deeds, or autocratic decision-making. The reasons that only 25 percent of Americans voted for Hillary Clinton will become more clear with analysis, though some elements of this outcome I suspect will remain opaque.

The reasons that the remaining 50 percent of Americans did not vote for any candidate include despair, cynicism, principle, and challenges to the right to vote. I will not castigate non-voters. I will praise them for not voting for a dangerous, ill-informed, disrespectful, undignified, greedy, and hate-filled bully. The fact that 75 percent of Americans did not vote for this candidate makes clear that Trump values are not American values. This vote says that whatever the reasons might have been for not voting, we need you now to avow your majority position in being publicly vigilant, articulate, respectful of difference, and caring toward the most vulnerable among our people and creatures with whom we share the planet.

We have seen language used to manipulate people, distort reality, deny facts, and betray our American ideals of liberty and justice. We need now to believe in the power of language to help us connect across our differences, express empathy, form new alliances, fuel our better natures, and live more fully the values we espouse. Surely surprising acts of resistance will rise from the spirit of resilience and solidarity energized by this dangerous turn in American leadership. Maybe all the women who attend the Million Women March in Washington should wear the hijab in solidarity with those who feel the very real vulnerability arising from the threatening rhetoric of the campaign. I think of this remembering the symbolic power of an action taken just days after the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015 when public protests were banned. Ten thousand pairs of shoes were lined up in the Place de la Republique—shoes from Pope Francis, shoes from the Dalai Lama, shoes of the living, and shoes of the dead. They stood in for the 200,000 people anticipated to gather on Paris streets ahead of the Paris climate summit.

Sure, take to streets, sign petitions, move to a red state and run for the school board, donate to organizations that work on the local level or promote human rights. 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.

Yours,
Alison Hawthorne Deming

Table of Contents

Contributors: Alcosser, Sandra; Araguz, José Angel; Babineau, Diana; Baldwin, Lyn; Bass, Ellen; Bass, Rick; Beatty, Anne P.; Boss, Todd; Bradfield, Elizabeth; Branch, Michael P.; Brimhall, Traci; Brorby, Taylor; Brown, Jericho; Cantu, Francisco; Campbell, Sue Ellen; Carney, Rob; Carter, Jacob; Case, Jennifer; Castro, Joy; Caswell, Kurt; Cerulean, Susan; Chang, Victoria; Church, Sophie & Steven; Clark, Miriam Marty; Cohen, Andrea; Davis, Todd; Deming, Alison Hawthorne; Desikan, Anita; Dodd, Elizabeth; Dungy, Camille; Espaillat, Rhina; Faizullah, Tarfia; Falconer, Blas; Ferguson, Bob; Fries, Deborah; Frischkorn, Suzanne; Gailey, Amanda; Gee, Allen; Gessner, David; Goldsaito, Katrina; Gotera, Vince; Gottlieb, Andrew; Hahn, Kimiko; Hadad, Patri; Hawkins, Amanda; Held, Dennis; Hernandez, David; Hedge Coke, Allison; Herrick, Lee; Hill, Sean; Hillman, Brenda; Hirshfield, Jane; Hirt, Jen; Hollars, BJ; Hollowell, Erin Coughlin; Houston, Pam; Huntington, Cynthia; Hurd, Barbara; Inskeep, Sarah; Johnson, Fenton; Kaytes, Jolie; Kenney, Richard; Kimmerer, Robin Wall; Knight, Amy; Lane, John; Lee, Karen An-hwei; Lenhart, Lawrence; Malone, Erin; Marquart, Debra; Marshall, Tod; McDonnell, Anne Haven; McElroy, Colleen; McLane, Michael; McLarney, Rose; McNamee, Gregory; McNulty, Tim; Meek, Sandra; Merrill, Christopher; Miles, Kathryn; Miller, JM; Minar, Scott; Moore, Kathleen Dean; Morales, Juan; Nezhukumatathil, Aimee; Nye, Naomi Shihab; O'Grady, John P.; Passarello, Elena; Pearle, Georgia; Price, John T.; Rader, Dean; Renfro, Yelizaveta P.; Richardson, Rachel; Robinson, Rebecca; Strom, Stephen; Roripaugh, Lee Ann; Rush, Elizabeth; Ryan, Heather; Sanders, Scott Russell; Savoy, Lauret; Schaberg, Christopher; Sheffield, Derek; Sherard, Cherene; Shumaker, Peggy; Silano, Martha; Skeen, Sarah; Sloan, Aisha Sabatini; Smith, Jasmine Elizabeth; Smith, R. T.; Sonnenschein, Dana; Soto, Gary; Souza, Pete; Spagna, Ana Maria; Stafford, Kim; Staples, Catherine; Steingraber, Sandra; Street, Laura-Gray; Sze, Arthur; Teague, Alexandra; Thompson, Deborah; Tevis, Joni; Voigt, Jeremy; Walker, Nicole; Warren, Scott; Weingarten, Debbie; Welti, Ellen; Wheeler, Lesley; Wilkins, Joe; Wiman, Christian; Wolpé, Sholeh; Wrigley, Robert; Yang, Andrew
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