Brandon’s Note: During the June meeting, Book Club member Eggie casually blindsided the group in the best way, when he compared Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass text to Hip-Hop artists and their lyrics. He earned the “Littest Member of the Month” award, but the group agreed the conversation couldn’t just stop there. I caught up with the man of the (urban) woods formerly known as Eggie, to get some context to his award winning contribution. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

When Yahdon revealed Braiding Sweetgrass in the club, what were your initial thoughts?

Eggie:

My initial thought when Yahdon showed the book in the meeting was, "Oh, okay, botany." I wasn't really pressed on it. But that reaction took a complete 180 degree turn when I opened the first page of the book. Literally, the first essay, “Skywoman Falling,” that first page, it was so captivating. The way she used anthropomorphism to make everything have feelings. Everything has feelings from that very first page. From that very first page, it captured me.

I knew that I wanted to take my time with this one and really just spend time digging through her collection of essays because her relationship with her space is not one-sided. She's not occupying space as much as the space is occupying the indigenous culture. The author and her culture are sharing it and the space lives in them. And that's where the connection to my own experience happened.

I grew up personifying my environment, right? I grew up hearing “the hood don't love you.” My environment growing up was very much alive. It instantly took me there. So, as I read through the rest of it, I kept making these connections to the way that I experienced the world growing up and the way that she is describing how her culture experiences the world in general.

Take me through that process of how you internalized the text and then dropped Hip-Hop comparisons. How did that end up being a result of engaging the author’s words?

Eggie:

I think that first of all, the way that I experienced nature, I don't just consider woods and rural areas as nature. I consider us, if we're a part of nature and we make up nature, even urban environments, with the buildings, are all a part of nature.

It's experiencing the natural world. It's not necessarily about expansive valleys and forests. That was the first point for me that I immediately felt. When she was talking about these intricate networks and natural worlds, I didn't limit the natural world to Nebraska.

To me, the city and the inner boroughs are just as much of a natural world. All of our nature looks different and feels different, but overall, the relationship felt very, very much like a parallel one. So, that was the first thing and then, I made connections to Hip-Hop.

Connection to the Lox

Eggie:

The way she described how the indigenous approached living stuck out to me. She wrote about how they and nature move as one, one for all. That whole thing felt like the rallying cry behind a lot of my favorite Hip-Hop.

Take The Lox for example, they have an album called “We Are The Streets.” There’s a literal one-to-one connection between what the indigenous relationship with nature is built on and what The Lox writes about, in terms of how their relationship with their space. That entire album is about them being molded by the street and now, how they operate in that street. I felt a natural connection.

In the song “We Are The Streets” where (Lox member) Sheek Louch raps, "from the Hamptons to the place where you like to eat. I put somethin' in them yams, you keep thinkin' is sweet." Obviously "yams'' is a slang term for crack. Clearly, that's not the kind of vegetable the author is talking about, but I found all these references to natural things interesting. That's what started triggering my synapses, that connection between the physical space that they occupy, and then, the natural elements that they added to their raps while trying to define how they belong to the streets.

Captured by Johnathan Mannion for Honey Magazine

Connection to Lauryn Hill

For the book’s “The Council of Pecans” essay, it was a matter of reciprocity. The word "reciprocity" immediately took me to Lauryn Hill. “Ex-Factor” was the first song I heard that word. When I heard it, it was a different thing to ask for in a relationship. When you listen to most love songs, that's not what people ask for directly, even if that's what they're trying to get to.

When I read the word "reciprocity" in the context of that essay, it sent me right to that song. When I listened back to “Ex-Factor”, there were connections to a similar relationship. It was clear Lauryn's talking about being in an unhealthy relationship. She's not done with them. She's still ready to continue giving to the person, but she just wants respect.

And that's exactly what the author's essays are saying we need to do with the natural world. The natural world isn’t going to stop providing for us, it is more that we need to start respecting what they do provide us. Just treat them more like a family member, more like a person that is from your community and part of you, really. You're not just occupying space in it, it's also a part of you, and a part of what's occupying you.

This really is deeper than rap for you but Hip-Hop gave you steps to build this bridge, right?

Eggie:

Something that was inherent in the book and inherent in Hip Hop for me, is my experience with Hip-Hop. My parents don't listen to Hip-Hop. Nobody in my family listens to Hip-Hop. (Emigrating from the Dominican Republic at an early age,) I'm the first one to speak English. I'm the first one to really absorb the culture, American culture. And a lot of that learning came through Hip-Hop. So, the language of Hip-Hop is kind of what framed my thinking.

There’s an essay about The Grammar of Animacy. In that essay, the author talks about how the language of her people and English differ so much. Because English doesn't provide emotions to inanimate objects, it calls things "it." It actually forces you to call things "it," and it doesn't give you the leeway to treat inanimate objects as equals, right?

It's on page 55. So, "Water, land, and even a day, language is a mirror for seeing the animacy of the world, the life that pulses through all things, through pines and nuthatches and mushrooms. This is the language I hear in the woods; this is the language that lets us speak of what wells up all around us." That right there, to me, is literally hip-hop. It's reporting live from the jungle, the tribe, the hood, whatever synonym for what our natural world is. That is what hip hop does. It gives you the language to be able to speak about the stuff that wells up in front of you.

So when I was reading that, it really called back to the reason why I joined the book club in the first place. That language is a framework for what you're allowed to think. If you don't have the proper language, you literally just don't have the bridges to get to the thoughts that you need.

What would you say about this book to someone you care about in your environment, or in your family?

Eggie:

This is a book that makes you feel small in a good way. It makes you a small piece of a much larger picture in a very comforting way. The earth is here, the earth is going to be here, and we're this small piece of all these intricate networks that are consistently existing on top of each other. It's a multiverse. So, this book really puts you into a perspective where you could get a better feel for your position in the natural world.

How Eggie Became the N.A.T.U.R.E. Man