A01=Cherise Morris
African diasporic spirituality
Afrodiasporic cosmology
Alexis Pauline Gumbs readers
ancestral healing
Author_Cherise Morris
Black ecology
Black environmental writ
Black feminist writing
Black identity in America
Black liberation
Camille Dungy readers
Category=DNL
Category=FXE
Category=JBFA1
Category=NHTR1
Claudia Rankine readers
climate justice and race
decolonial writing
Detroit urban farming
environmental justice
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
experimental nonfiction
forthcoming
literary nonfiction about race
lyric essay
Middle Passage legacy
nature and spirituality
race and the environment
Product details
- ISBN 9781913175924
- Publication Date: 22 Oct 2026
- Publisher: Cassava Republic Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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A powerful meditation on Blackness, ancestry and the natural world.
In Elemental Blackness: Black Liberation and the Natural World, Cherise Morris weaves poetry, memoir, prayer and cultural criticism into a bold, genre-defying exploration of what it means to be Black in America.
Organised around the four elements of earth, water, fire and air, the book traces the deep connections between racial oppression and environmental destruction. From the legacy of the Middle Passage to the Flint water crisis, from rural Virginia to Detroit’s urban farms, Morris examines how Black communities have been shaped by histories of dispossession, violence and ecological harm, while also reclaiming the natural world as a source of memory, resistance and healing.
Drawing on African diasporic spiritual traditions, ancestral cosmologies and her own lived experience, Morris moves fluidly between lyric essay, ritual, prayer and memoir to ask urgent questions about freedom, belonging and survival in a world marked by climate crisis and racial injustice.
Winner of the inaugural Global Black Women’s Non-Fiction Manuscript Prize, chaired by Bernardine Evaristo, Elemental Blackness announces the arrival of an extraordinary new voice in contemporary nonfiction.
In Elemental Blackness: Black Liberation and the Natural World, Cherise Morris weaves poetry, memoir, prayer and cultural criticism into a bold, genre-defying exploration of what it means to be Black in America.
Organised around the four elements of earth, water, fire and air, the book traces the deep connections between racial oppression and environmental destruction. From the legacy of the Middle Passage to the Flint water crisis, from rural Virginia to Detroit’s urban farms, Morris examines how Black communities have been shaped by histories of dispossession, violence and ecological harm, while also reclaiming the natural world as a source of memory, resistance and healing.
Drawing on African diasporic spiritual traditions, ancestral cosmologies and her own lived experience, Morris moves fluidly between lyric essay, ritual, prayer and memoir to ask urgent questions about freedom, belonging and survival in a world marked by climate crisis and racial injustice.
Winner of the inaugural Global Black Women’s Non-Fiction Manuscript Prize, chaired by Bernardine Evaristo, Elemental Blackness announces the arrival of an extraordinary new voice in contemporary nonfiction.
Cherise Morris is a writer born and raised in rural Virginia and based in Detroit, Michigan. Her work has appeared in The Iowa Review, Scalawag and Harvard Divinity Bulletin, among others. Her essays have twice been recognised as notable works in The Best American Essays series and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Elemental Blackness: Black Liberation and the Natural World is her debut book and the winner of the inaugural Global Black Women’s Non-Fiction Manuscript Prize, chaired by Bernardine Evaristo.
