Beginning in chapter 1 of Growing Gardens, Building Power, sociologist Justin Sean Myers makes clear that “gardens in East New York are not just about growing food: they are about growing dreams. . . . They are for growing community” (4–5). These words offer a key sound bite for Myers's well-researched, in-depth analysis of how gardens in the working-class Black, Latinx, and Caribbean neighborhood of East New York in Brooklyn clarify the social history and contemporary work of the urban food justice movement. Methodologically, Myers blends ethnography, interviews, and secondary sources to explore how the efforts of East New York Farms!, a food justice organization, reconfigures its local food system as a way to address racial, ethnic, and class inequities. This story transports the reader across time, space, and place, showing how historical and contemporary social, political, economic, and environmental forces collide in garden spaces. This collision brings into focus the power relations that activists in the food justice movement and the broader food movement navigate to get food from the garden to the homes that line the streets of urban neighborhoods across the nation.
...MoreBook Justin Sean Myers (2022) Growing Gardens, Building Power: Food Justice and Urban Agriculture in Brooklyn.
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