Green and is the new black: a grammar of ecocritical readings in african american poetry and envirommental justice law

"I begin this paper with two excerpts from African American poetry. The first evokes a past in which blacks were possessions; the second, a future in which they are interplanetary pilgrims. To connect them, I’d like to offer a quote not from verse but from the public discourse of African American environmental justice activist, Van Jones: “In my neighborhood, you go around talking to people about polar bears, they are not feeling you.”...""I begin this paper with two excerpts from African American poetry. The first evokes a past in which blacks were possessions; the second, a future in which they are interplanetary pilgrims. To connect them, I’d like to offer a quote not from verse but from the public discourse of African American environmental justice activist, Van Jones: “In my neighborhood, you go around talking to people about polar bears, they are not feeling you...