Nature is something that has always been a part of me. My parents grew up in two different places. My mother grew up in the city suburbs of Boston near the Mystic River and would go to Revere Beach on the weekends with her friends. My father grew up in a working-class factory town in Southern Massachusetts with his backyard becoming the woods his siblings would play in. I eventually grew up in a similar environment in Framingham with woods near my backyard and streams to jump around in. I learned to swim not in a pool, but in a pond, diving off the metal dock to explore what lay below the surface. I ventured into the woods around my elementary schools, traversing into the forbidden areas. Our family trips would be to places in the Pioneer Valley, Cape Cod, or Mystic Beach. The natural world felt like who I was as a kid, even if I don’t go outside as much as I used to. I wanted to write my own stories and characters after reading so much as a kid. Most of my works from that point on were inspired by the natural world. I enjoyed setting my characters in settings and scenarios that would allow me to look at some incredible places, whether in person or through a computer screen.
Once a year, I read a book I read back in 5th grade, On the Other Side of the Island by Allegra Goodman. The book is a science fiction/dystopian novel that discusses the political repercussions of climate change on a newly created society. As I have gotten older, I have noticed broader discussions of topics including eco-fascism, overpopulation, and environmental justice in terms of class that has made me come back to it. Henry David Thoreau was an author I read in middle and high school that helped me shape my personal philosophy. Reading transcendentalism helped me understand what I wanted to worship and believe as I was starting to explore other religions outside of the Christianity I grew up with. Nature writing can allow for people to express their love of the natural world in many ways that allow for humanity to work to understand one another through a universal constant of living on Earth.
I feel like I would want to write my own perspective due to having a less common narrative presented in the society at large. Ecofeminism is something that I would be interested in as well as eco-queerness. The natural world has provided many queer people an example that our lives in terms of sexuality and gender are natural compared to established scientific or religious dogma. I would also write from an environmental justice angle given that I grew up in a minority-majority, ESL, immigrant, lower-income densely populated neighborhood with multiple contaminated/polluted sites. I would also like to write about the explorations of the land and sea and what the coast represents as both a barrier and a meditating place between the two regions.
