A01=Suzanne Matson
Author_Suzanne Matson
Buy Nothing Groups
Category=DNL
Category=JBSL
Category=WKH
collections
consumerism
decluttering
domestic science
emotional work
environmental precarity
environmental stress
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_home-garden
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
forthcoming
heirlooms
home economics
housekeeping
liminal space
material goods
online shopping
overconsumption
renunciation
Resource Recovery Centers
storage
thrift
wedding gifts
Product details
- ISBN 9781478039181
- Weight: 445g
- Dimensions: 178 x 127mm
- Publication Date: 03 Nov 2026
- Publisher: Duke University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In Winnowing, Suzanne Matson examines our personal, cultural, and environmental relationship with material objects. Matson alternates between reflective essays on the nature of ownership and her own “Winnowing Log,” a day-by-day account of her attempts to reduce the items in her home. Sorting through the emotional value of mementos, the gendered dimensions of housekeeping, and the environmental cost of both mass production and disposal, she physically, mentally, and spiritually lightens her life while reflecting on the tethers that make winnowing so hard. She compares ideas of material impermanence in Stoicism, Buddhism, and Christianity, acknowledging that total renunciation of things is beyond most people’s goals or abilities, but also that reducing what we own, carry, and tend can clear space for spiritual lightness, aesthetic pleasure, and freedom. Rather than a celebration or condemnation of material goods, Winnowing is a meditation on the personal and universal struggles and rewards of separating the chaff from the grain.
Suzanne Matson is Professor of English at Boston College and the author of several novels and books of poetry, including Ultraviolet, The Tree-Sitter, and A Trick of Nature.
