Joy is the Justice We Give Ourselves

J. Drew Lanham is the author of Sparrow Envy: Field Guide to Birds and Lesser Beasts and The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature. He has received a MacArthur "Genius" Grant as well as the Dan W. Lufkin Conservation Award (National Audubon Society), the Rosa Parks and Grace Lee Boggs Outstanding Service Award (North American Association for Environmental Education), and the E. O. Wilson Award for Outstanding Science in Biodiversity Conservation (Center for Biological Diversity). He served as the Poet Laureate of Edgefield, South Carolina in 2022. He is a bird watcher, poet, and Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology and Master Teacher at Clemson University. He lives in Seneca, South Carolina.

“With his consistently engaging writing, keen eye, and generosity of spirit, Lanham is a writer to whom we should all listen closely. Lanham memorably, vibrantly shows how choosing joy is an act of resilience, courage, and power.” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review"Lanham is warmly contemplative, righteous, incensed, funny, and grateful. His poetics, knowledge, and dissent run deep; his poems are winged."—Booklist, Starred Review"Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves is a melodious collection—an ode to choosing joy and to the resilience that such choosing requires." —Brooke Shannon, Foreword Reviews"A deeply personal book that evokes joy and reflection by a writer whose generosity of spirit emanates from the page." —Amy Brady, Literary Hub“Interweaving poetry and prose, Black joy shines through in this eco-aware, Black-centered book that offers a refreshing point of view and demands that Black bodies receive the same beautified Earth on which we were all born.” —The New York Amsterdam News“Through Lanham's experience as a Black poet and writer, bird watcher, and Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology, his poems offer a kaleidoscope of intersectional perspectives [...]. In this collection, he guides the reader to first be present, then to be more aware of the world we live in, and finally to make a choice towards hope and progress. Nature is a place of solace and transcendence, a key for pure reflection and seeking refuge from the dichotomous times we live in [...]. The collection is alive with a heartbeat—the pulse is strong.” —Jake Lawson, Appalachian Journal"These poems don’t speak to us as readers alone, though. They feel deeply personal, as if we’re getting a glimpse into Lanham’s journal entries on a morning after he’s been birding. He’s instructing himself, as well. Perhaps these instructions are his way of practicing the justice of joy—how to stay alive and thrive as a Black man in a nation where Black joy has been long fought for centuries." —Ciona Rouse, Chapter 16