Featured Voices - Earth in Color

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Featured Voices

Contributed pieces exploring the various intersections of Blackness and Greenness

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Featured Voices

Featured Voices

Afloat: Black Floridians on the Water, Gentrification, and Survival

Two Black queer Floridians discuss their relationships to the land and water, and what survival looks like for Black Floridians.

Featured Voices

The Geographies I’m Made Of

Teju Adisa-Farrar shares an environmental analysis of self connecting her lived experiences of West Oakland, California and Spanish Town, Jamaica.

Featured Voices

“Not of any other world either”

Three kitchen poems from the edge of time.

Featured Voices

The Lessons of the Water

Siraad Dirshe reflects on what being close to the ocean and learning how to surf has taught her over the last three years.

Featured Voices

Finding Home

This is what sustainable homebuilding on a budget looks like.

Featured Voices

Native Land and Belonging

A Conversation with Vanessa Denali Standing Horse Farley of the Chippewa Cree Tribe of Rocky Boy Indians.

Featured Voices

Rooted (In)Justice

"Landscapes of inequity are never accidental."

@earthincolor.co

To celebrate the summer solstice, we've dropped al

To celebrate the summer solstice, we've dropped all new stories and recipes that bring us into the season ☀️ It's no secret that the past few months have been exhausting, so we are carving out space for us to relax, rejoice, and recreate all season long. Make your way over to our website www.earthincolor.co to explore the summer drop!

As Black people, our environmental footprints are

As Black people, our environmental footprints are often shaped by various forms of displacement, which stem from the long legacies of colonialism, segregation and environmental inequity. Examining our environmental geographies can help us better understand the possibilities for our collective futures.

Read Teju Adisa-Farrar’s full environmental analysis of self under the Featured Voices section on our website 🌍

Did you know that peanut plants help to improve so

Did you know that peanut plants help to improve soil health? Like other legumes, peanuts are nitrogen-fixing plants that supply plant-enhancing nitrogen to the soil, which essentially acts like a natural fertilizer. Artificial man-made fertilizers attempt to mimic this process, but often end up deleting the nutrients in the soil, while regenerative methods like crop rotation can help maintain soil ecosystems. Working with (instead of against) nature to grow our food promotes soil health, protects local biodiversity, and as a result helps regenerate our Earth.
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Learn more about the restorative properties of peanut plants by visiting our website at the #linkinbio
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There’s less than a week left to submit a pitch!

There’s less than a week left to submit a pitch! The intentions guiding our stories for this fall are reclaim, relate, and resist. Visit the “Submissions” tab on our website with the link in our bio to learn more!

"I had to truly become humble enough to remain a s

"I had to truly become humble enough to remain a student, whether on a surfboard or at my job—something that ended up having a deep and profound impact on my life. I was reminded daily that I don’t know everything, and that the only way to expand is by constantly being a student. In the water, to improve you must be patient and open to constantly trying and doing new things, and understanding that as soon as one thing is mastered, there’s something else to go after."

For more from @sdirshe on what she's learned through surfing, check out the full piece on our website 🌊📷: @lucky_peters

Before even deciding to leave Washington D.C. and

Before even deciding to leave Washington D.C. and move to her current home in a mountainous area of rural West Virginia, Ms. Sheila Coleman Castells saw the house that would become hers in a dream. “I believe in the power of my dreams,” she told Earth in Color. “I believe in the power of trusting when something feels right deep inside.”

Read our full interview with Ms. Sheila and her son John Paul “JP” at the UNEARTHED tab on our website.
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#EarthinColor #mountains #quote #quotes #weoutside #keepingitnatural #backtoournature #nature #earth #land #environmentalism #blacksustainability

In his community spotlight, plant parent Demetri B

In his community spotlight, plant parent Demetri Broxton (@the_botanical_blasian) talked a bit about the relationship between plants and imperialism. As he explains it, learning about a plant's native environment is necessary in order to best take care of them. Read the full piece at the link in our bio 🌱

Every season, we publish personal narratives, guid

Every season, we publish personal narratives, guides, poems, photo essays, and other stories—all of which are guided by the rhythms of the Earth.

Check out the “PITCHES” tab on our website (link in bio!) to learn more about writing for Earth in Color. We look forward to featuring your voice.

Looking for new plant-based recipes? Our EATS stor

Looking for new plant-based recipes? Our EATS story series has a collection of recipes for flavorful plant-rich dishes and snacks that can satisfy any craving. EATS is not about what you can or can’t eat, or what you should or shouldn’t eat. It’s about eating (and cooking!) more plants and enjoying every single bite. Make your way to the link in our bio to check it out!

📸: @thegr8justinian

Poet, potter, and cook Makshya Tolbert (@processda

Poet, potter, and cook Makshya Tolbert (@processdaily) revists plantation-era kitchen cellars in central Virgina through three poems, “listening for signs of Black interior life” as they weave Black diasporic foodways and geologic memory over time. Makshya sees themself as “living in the ruptures between Black ancestral memory and ecological practice,” and when paired with artist Rawley Clark’s gorgeous illustration, their poems “Seething Aubade,” “Green Silk…Sky Signal,” and “Cellar Nocturne” are brought to life in a new way.

🎨: @rawlzzzart

It’s Taco Tuesday! If you’re looking for a qui

It’s Taco Tuesday! If you’re looking for a quick and flavorful dinner, make your way to the EATS section of our website to get the recipe for these flavorful crispy tempeh tacos. They taste even better than they look 😋

📸: @thegr8justinian

The Black Panthers ‘Free Breakfast for School Ch

The Black Panthers ‘Free Breakfast for School Children Program’ is a perfect example of how community care can be used to counteract the harm of environmental racism. From 1969 to 1980, the Black Panthers fed children in West Oakland breakfast every morning — eventually feeding more poor school children than the State of California!

Read Teju Adisa-Farrar’s entire essay, “The Geographies I’m Made Of,” at the link in our bio 🌍

For a simple (and delicious) way to incorporate mo

For a simple (and delicious) way to incorporate more plants into your diet, look to legumes! Roasted chickpeas are versatile and can be used in dishes such as salads and rice bowls, or as a standalone crunchy snack. In fact, our EATS recipe for roasted chickpeas comes in seasoned, BBQ, and salt & vinegar—just like potato chips.

📸: @thegr8justinian

“I started loving the land at an early age in DC

“I started loving the land at an early age in DC, and I tried to get out as much as possible. I played little league baseball for a couple of years, just so that I could be on dirt for a while every week. I moved to West Virginia after eighth grade, and my friends in high school taught me what it was like to really grow up here—where everyone is in community with each other and the land. When I first got here, the land was something I had a connection to. It was a release and an escape, but I only saw it as property, a thing you have. What I came to realize is that the land here dictates a lifestyle, and at the same time, it’s your partner.

My mother had bought our land recently, and before we got there, it belonged to somebody else. If you live next to a river, you can’t control any part of it; when there’s high tide after snowmelt or heavy rain, the river is going to destroy lots of things that you don’t want to be destroyed. But the river also provides the subtle sounds that you love, good fish, clean water. It provides fertile land next to you, recreation, and peacefulness. I had to consume the land, through my eyes, nose, and ears, to understand that. I learned to coexist with the land.”

Read the rest of our interview with John Paul “JP” Castells and his mother Sheila by visiting the UNEARTHED tab on our website.

🎨: @kelssweetie

“If you’re not from the South, you may be unfa

“If you’re not from the South, you may be unfamiliar with boiled peanuts,” says Earth in Color founder @duurrl. “They are a soft and salty snack that takes me back to my childhood. All of my biological family is from South Carolina. And as a youth, I spent summers washing away the red clay that accumulated from a long day outside, getting ripe watermelons off the back of pickup trucks, and buying boiled peanuts from the flea market.”

Visit the EATS tab on our website to find the recipe for Cajun Boiled Peanuts and to read about Black people’s long history with this salty snack 🥜

Our Earth Curiosity story series goes deep on a ra

Our Earth Curiosity story series goes deep on a range of topics to uncover the often overlooked connections between science, innovation, nature, and Black communities. Our people have a long history of sustaining ourself through our connections to and deep knowledge of the natural world.
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First up: Oysters!

Did your mouth start watering while you were makin

Did your mouth start watering while you were making heart eyes at this photo? Make a beeline to the EATS tab on our website to get the recipe for this Dill Chickpea Salad sandwich.

📸: Justin Weathers (@thegr8justinian)

Have you listened to our new Radicle Sounds playli

Have you listened to our new Radicle Sounds playlist? This spring, we collaborated with Houston-based sound curator @by.womon on a playlist that embodies our intentions for this season: renew, rejuvenate, reroot/reroute.

"If I’m listening to “After the Party” or if I’m listening to “Dance Tonight” and then I switch over to “Rain” from the Sunday Service Choir and then I go listen to afrobeats, I can find an element of home in all of these different spaces," WOMON said about the Spring Radicle Sounds Playlist. "I just think it’s so beautiful that we, as Black people, exist all across the spectrum. We can do all of the things. There’s nothing that Black people cannot do, and music affirms that."

Listen to the entire playlist at the link in our bio 🎶

Ms. Sheila Coleman Castells and her son John Paul

Ms. Sheila Coleman Castells and her son John Paul “JP” Castells live in Eglon, West Virginia, a farming community right on the western border of Appalachian Maryland. They moved to their three-acre plot of land, which Ms. Sheila calls “the Holy Mountain,” after leaving their long-time home of Washington, DC. “It’s so rural that we have no street lights, only two stoplights, and most of our roads are made of gravel,” Ms. Sheila says about her home. “In the last census, our town had about 180 people.”

Visit the link in our bio to read the entire UNEARTHED story about this Black mother and son’s experience creating a home in the mountains of Western Virginia—and to check out all our other new pieces, of course!

If you’re craving a plant-rich snack that’s bo

If you’re craving a plant-rich snack that’s both salty and spicy, try our EATS Cajun Boiled Peanuts 🥜 This Southern staple has a rich history—in fact, boiled peanuts are actually the official state snack of South Carolina. Is your stomach rumbling?

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