How to parent in a world under siege?
LESSONS FOR SURVIVAL: Being a Mother Against ‘the Apocalypse’ by Emily Raboteau
Emily Raboteau’s “Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against ‘the Apocalypse'” begins with a touch of twisted humor. Pregnant with her first child and on her way to her baby shower, she sees a chalk message on a sandwich board on the sidewalk: “The end of the world is near!” The moment – an announcement of impending death colliding with a celebration of an impending birth – encapsulates the tensions that drive Raboteau’s book, a soulful exploration of the fraught experience of tending to a crisis.
In twenty essays, many illustrated with her arresting photographs of murals and other public art in New York City, she considers a trio of emergencies: climate change, racially motivated police violence, and the Covid-19 pandemic. These problems for Raboteau are compounded by developments on both political and personal levels, including the election of Donald Trump as president in 2016; her ordeals with sexual harassment and abuse, chronic pain and the death of her father (the great historian of religion Albert Raboteau); and the environmental and caste divides in American society.
Her central concern is how to parent responsibly in dangerous times, when the planet is warming, the country is divided and even adults feel lost and afraid. “What does it mean to survive in the midst of long-term crises; constant renegotiation of threats against life; deal with?” she asks, expanding on the haunting question that prompted her to write her book: “Will my children be okay when I’m gone?”
During her baby shower, her mother gave her a handmade quilt as a gift. The quilt, with an iconic American log cabin design, becomes a recurring motif as Raboteau reflects on the need for home, the love of home, and the transience of home, highlighting the plight of climate refugees (and noting that many Americans will one day fall into that category). She also uses the quilt to shape the artful structure of her book, stitching her essays together using the log cabin pattern, which connects disparate horizontal and vertical strips of fabric into a harmonious whole. Juxtaposing images of death and life, despair and hope, Raboteau emphasizes that even as we face a world that is “changing faster than we can handle,” we must continue to care for each other and embrace the joys of everyday life.
While sharing her experiences as a writer, mother, and Black resident of New York City, she skillfully interweaves observations from friends, scientists, and literary figures like Emily Dickinson and Toni Morrison with stark climate data and social science findings. In her first essay, the lovely “Spark Bird,” Raboteau follows a trail of painted birds through Upper Manhattan—part of a National Audubon Society Project to raise awareness of endangered species – and find they improve her mood. The first mural she notices, which she calls “my spark” (birder’s jargon for the bird that inspires a casual viewer to become an avid birdwatcher), depicts a pair of burrowing owls. Suggesting associations with wisdom and death, and, in the case of this species, a protective habitat, the owls poignantly embody the themes of her book.
Elsewhere, Raboteau reports on trips to Israel and Palestine, where she learns about the local water crisis, exacerbated by political conflict; and to a Yupik community on the coast of Alaska, where she interviews village elders about environmental changes they have witnessed. Yet another essay, a climate diary she has kept for a year, consists of comments around the dinner table from friends concerned about erosion, floods, forest fires, hurricanes, cyclones, sandstorms, toxic algae blooms, drought, desertification and loss of agricultural land . , heat waves, locust swarms and more. If her obvious subjects are loss, survival and resilience, a quieter but no less important subject is the life-sustaining act of sharing our burdens.
Her last essay, the lyrical ‘Dream House and the Pond’, is an allegory for our times. Here, Raboteau describes how she and her husband bought their first house in the Bronx, only to discover it was built on swampland. After losing a battle with the water collecting in front of the house, Raboteau learns to accept and respect it. “The pond is the paved wetland that reaffirms its shape. It transcends the mirage of the house,” she writes.
In this home vulnerable to the elements as the climate worsens, Raboteau has many beloved things: her father’s desk, the produce from her backyard and her family. They are all threatened by the many crises outside her door. Nevertheless, on the last page of her book she returns to the comforting quilt motif inspired by her mother’s gift: “Our land is a quilt, and our house is but a structure among structures among pollinating plants visited by trees.” Perspective can be a saving grace.
As Raboteau grapples with much that is wrong in our troubled world, she does so with bracing honesty and insight. The strength of her book is her willingness to express concerns that many feel but do not want to express. Realizing she cannot protect her children from environmental and social changes already underway, she faces the headwinds of that parental pain, singing lullabies to her sons as they worry about superstorms flooding the subways , and teaches them the names of birds, despite knowing how many there are. critically endangered.
As Raboteau studies a photo of her sons dressed in terrifying Halloween costumes, she reflects, “My young ones look strong and alert. Good. They will have to be brave for the roadworks ahead.”
LESSONS FOR SURVIVAL: Mothering against ‘the Apocalypse’ | By Emily Raboteau | Holt | 284 pages | $29.99