links for 2010-10-07

I'm really not too different from many other young people picking up the pitchfork and joining the ranks of the rapidly growing food movement … except that I seem to be the only person of color I know doing so. In fact, in my exploration from afar of the farming movement, I found very few farms and food-justice organizations being run by blacks or Latinos. Race has long been a hot topic in the environmental movement, but it saddened me to realize that, for the most part, this exciting food movement that I so badly want to be a part of is not even being led by the communities that most need it to take root.

"Depending on who is listening, the characters in the collection — titled "Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self" — could be a best friend or that girl down the street, but many of them are "outsiders," says Evans, black or biracial people who are wrestling with race and the legacy of race in a so-called post-racial era.

Often, she says, her characters do not feel they belong in one culture or another. They straddle the divide between white and black. Evans says her stories explore the meaning of race at this particular time in this country when it seems that racial divides should have disappeared. The truth, she believes, is that the lines have just receded to the point that they are harder to see."