Essayist Nicole Walker digs deep into lifestyle choices--and the nature of choice itself--in her eco-conscious essay collection Sustainability: A Love Story.
Walker (Egg) has a talent for bending creative nonfiction to maximum capacity, blending narrative storytelling and factual analysis. The 38 essays in Sustainability aren't discrete; they're linked in theme and form, like roots of a great tree. Together, the essays try to answer the question of how a middle-class white American family can live sustainably in the 21st century knowing global warming is already wreaking havoc. Walker's environmental concerns shift from global perspectives on climate change and catastrophic weather to local issues (she lives in Flagstaff, Ariz.) of community recycling and forest fire prevention.
Walker is a college professor, but hers isn't a distant armchair environmentalism. These essays succeed because of their messiness and their insistence on analyzing domesticity, the infinitesimal choices and attitudes that add up to a lifestyle. She admits, more than once, her own hypocrisy--she consumes fossil fuels, eats meat, etc.--but that doesn't stop her from trying to live sustainably in a way that honors her values.
Two of the most powerful essays, "Pipeline" and "Sustenance," tackle darker subjects of addiction and suicide. Walker ties these subjects to questions of free will, individualism and the way humans rebel against their environment, hurting those they're connected with most. But even here, Walker's optimistic environmentalism--her dream of sustainability--persists: "It takes a lot of work and a lot of imagination to make reality good."
Sustainability: A Love Story beautifully balances human need with urgent environmental realities. --Scott Neuffer, writer, poet, editor of trampset