S7 Ep. 24: Lessons for Survival: Emily Raboteau on Mothering and Climate Change

Writer Emily Raboteau joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to talk about mothering in the face of climate change and systemic inequality. Raboteau discusses the difference between “resilience” and “trauma-informed growth,” and considers which one more realistically describes how people react to devastation. She also reflects on writing about Indigenous communities and histories, developing language to capture shifting environmental realities, and the intersections of climate and racial justice. Finally, she explains the influence of her late father, Albert Raboteau, a groundbreaking professor of African American religion, on her community-minded approach to these topics. She reads from Lessons for Survival, her new collection of essays about care and mothering in the climate crisis. 

To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/

This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf.

Emily Raboteau

Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against “the Apocalypse”

Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora

The Professor’s Daughter

“Climate Signs”|The New York Review of Books, February 1, 2019

“Lessons in Survival”|The New York Review of Books, November 21, 2019

“The Unequal Racial Burdens of Rising Seas”|The New York Times, April 10, 2023

“Gutbucket”|Orion Magazine

Others:

Fiction/Non/Fiction: Season 2, Episode 15: “Emily Raboteau and Omar El Akkad Tell a Different Kind of Climate Change Story”

“Special Report: Global Warming of 1.5 ºC”|Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, October 2018

“UN Says Climate Genocide Is Coming. It’s Actually Worse Than That” by David Wallace-Wells|New York Magazine, October 10, 2018

The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells

“Young Readers Ask: The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells” by Geronimo Lavalle|Orion Magazine, April 9, 2019

“In Pictures: New York Under a Haze of Wildfire Smoke|Le Monde, June 7, 2023

Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore by Elizabeth Rush

“Why Indonesia Is Shifting Its Capital From Jakarta”|Bloomberg, August 24, 2019

“Sea Level Rise and Implications for Low-Lying Islands, Coasts and Communities”|Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, September 2019

“Managed Retreat through Voluntary Buyouts of Flood-Prone Properties” by Katherine J. Mach et. al.|Science Advances, October 9, 2019

“Climate Change Isn’t the First Existential Threat” by Mary Annaïse Heglar|ZORA, February 18, 2019

Anya Kamenetz

“‘Culture Will Be Eroded’: Climate Crisis Threatens to Flood Harriet Tubman Park”|The Guardian, November 23, 2019

Charleston: Race, Water, and the Coming Storm by Susan Crawford and Annette Gordon-Reed

Justin Brice Guariglia

Albert Raboteau

Slave Religion: The "Invisible Institution" in the Antebellum South by Albert Raboteau

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