WILD GIRLS

How women discovered themselves in nature.

Harvard historian Miles, a MacArthur fellow and National Book Award winner for All That She Carried, offers a sensitive examination of the lives of women—primarily Black and Native American—for whom the natural world served as an “imagination station and training ground.” For women such as escaped slave Harriet Tubman, Indigenous explorer Sacagawea, and science fiction writer Octavia Butler, the natural world provided “a space to discover who they were and what they were capable of.” Tubman, who labored largely in fields, farms, and forests, learned how “to listen to, forage, and navigate the woods,” skills that enabled her to successfully liberate dozens of slaves. Similarly, Harriet Jacobs, who was formerly enslaved, saw “trees and woods as places of relief, restoration, secrecy, and refuge.” For Tubman, Jacobs, and white abolitionist Laura Smith Haviland, “nature’s classroom” made them acutely aware of societal and political subjugation and oppression. Miles connects love of nature with a celebration of “wild freedom” in the works of Louisa May Alcott, a self-proclaimed tomboy who loved to romp in the woods, escaping the strictures of Victorian girlhood; and in the writings of Native American poet Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, for whom the “uncomfortable realities of colonial intimacies” underlay her lyrical depictions of beloved landscapes. When Native American children were forcibly sent to government boarding schools, wrenched from their natural surroundings, many rebelled against the cultural and physical confinement they endured. Among 20th-century women whose lives were indelibly shaped by their outdoor experiences, Miles includes Chinese American activist Grace Lee Boggs and Mexican American labor activist Dolores Huerta. The author’s own reverence for nature intensified during the pandemic, when her backyard became a place of solace and beauty. Acknowledging the privilege that affords her this space for herself and her family, she makes a compelling plea for fostering “outside equity” to allow everyone to partake of nature’s gifts.

A fresh, graceful contribution to women’s history.