Discoveries: Frances Moore Lappé

By Susan Salter ReynoldsSeptember 24, 2011

Ecomind by Frances Moore Lappé

SO MANY OF US DEVOURED Diet for a Small Planet: When Lappé speaks, we listen. Now she wants more from us — more than changing the way we eat; she wants us to change the way we think of ourselves in nature and the way we conceive of the future. Our thinking is cluttered, she writes, by “assumptions that no longer fit reality”; assumptions about scarcity, separateness, and stasis. We assume we must give up to move forward; that growth must be limited and that our various goals (ending poverty, protecting the environment, resource conservation, carbon reduction, etc.) are unrelated and, worse, mutually exclusive. This book is an effort to jump-start our imaginations, to align us with nature so that our solutions are sustainable. It’s a book for doers, problem-solvers, citizens, full of exhilaration, camaraderie, dignity, and yes, anger.






 

LARB Contributor

Susan Salter Reynolds is a book critic and writer who lives in Los Angeles and Vermont. She has three children: Sam, Ellie, and Mia.

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