Book Club: Trace
Welcome to the very first Outside/In book club, featuring a conversation with geologist and writer Lauret Savoy.
Lauret considers fossil hunting and historical inquiry to be versions of the same pursuit. In Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape, Lauret uses the search for her family story as a lens to better understand American history, and the landscape as a lens to better understand her past.
“I define geology, or geo logo -- that's from the Greek for “understanding Earth” — I define it much more broadly than scientists do,” said Lauret. “For me, my writing in Trace is a form of doing geology: that is, understanding Earth and our place on it.”
Credit: Kris Bergbom
“The science of geology… offers an elemental foundation of place. Yet, it is also an offering of, at least in my view, of metaphor for considering the deposition and erosion of human memory and the fragmentation and displacement of human experience. And, for me, race and racism have been key to it all.”
Her memoir is a winding journey from southern California to Puritan New England, from Lake Superior to the U.S.- Mexico Border, and finally to Washington, D.C., where she grew up. For Lauret, identifying the geologic story in the American landscape was often easier than finding answers about her own family.
The next Outside/In book club pick is Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age by Annalee Newitz. Look for that episode in late summer.
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Credits
Outside/In is produced this week by Justine Paradis and Sam Evans-Brown with help from Taylor Quimby and Felix Poon.
Erika Janik is our executive producer.
Music in this episode by Chris Zabriskie and Blue Dot Sessions.
Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder..
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