FINALIST FOR THE ANISFIELD-WOLF BOOK AWARD, SHORTLISTED FOR THE BROOKLYN PUBLIC LIBRARY BOOK PRIZE   "Staggeringly beautiful." --Elliot Page, Them   Award-winning author and critic Emily Raboteau crafts a powerfully moving meditation on race, climate, environmental justice―and what it takes to find shelter. Lessons for Survival is a probing series of pilgrimages from the perspective of a mother struggling to raise her children to thrive without coming undone in an era of turbulent intersecting crises. With camera in hand, Raboteau goes in search of birds, fluttering in the air or painted on buildings, and city parks where her children may safely play while avoiding pollution, pandemics, and the police. She ventures abroad to learn from Indigenous peoples, and in her own family and community, she discovers the most intimate examples of resilience. Raboteau bears witness to the inner life of Black womanhood, motherhood, the brutalities and possibilities of cities, while celebrating the beauty and fragility of nature. This innovative work of reportage and autobiography stitches together multiple stories of protection, offering a profound sense of care. Finalist for the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Finalist for the ASLE Ecocritical Book Award One of Time ’s “100 Must-Read Books of 2024” One of ELLE Magazines ’ Best Nonfiction Books of 2024 One of Electric Literature ’s Best Nonfiction Books of 2024 Named one of The New York Times ’ “ 15 New Books to Read in March ” Named one of the Los Angeles Times ’ B ooks to Ease Climate Anxiety One of the Los Angeles Times ’ “10 Books to Add to Your Reading List in March” One of Vulture ’ s Book Highlights of 2024 Named one of Science Friday ’s “Best Science Beach Reads For Summer 2024” Named one of Electric Literature ’ s “ 75 Books by Women of Color to Read in 2024 ” Named one of Heatmap ’ s “ 17 Climate Books to Read in 2024 ” Named one of Lancaster Online ’ s Summer Books “A soulful exploration of the fraught experience of caretaking through crisis. . . . While Raboteau grapples with much that is wrong with our troubled world, she does so with bracing honesty and insight. The strength of her book is her willingness to express concerns that many feel but are reluctant to voice.” ―Tiya Miles, The New York Times Book Review “Interspersing punchy essays with striking photos of bird murals in her Bronx neighborhood, Raboteau chronicles her search for solace as a Black woman and mother in a world awash in political rage and threatened with climate disaster.” ― The New York Times “The question is, how do we push the politicians and corporations to figure out how to save our environment and acknowledge the economic and ecological discrepancies that still plague our culture? I suggest that every single one of them be required to read Lessons for Survival . Even for someone like me, always sympathetic to ecological concerns, it is eye-opening.” ―Jane Smiley, The Washington Post “Raboteau calls our attention to the ways in which environmental pressures will create even more social inequality between those who can afford to move, and those who are rooted by economic necessity and lack of access to alternatives.” ―Lorraine Berry, Los Angeles Times “In a series of evocative and layered essays, Raboteau explores the crises of our time from the perspective of a mother trying to brace her children for the future. With searing observations and profound honesty, she gives voice to the distress that many of us have quietly felt across so many interlinking aspects of our lives.” ―Rosanna Xia, Los Angeles Times “Through stories and photographs drawn from her own life and her studies abroad, Raboteau grounds the audience in the beauty―and resilience―of nature.” ― ELLE , A Most Anticipated Book of the Year “The book every Black mother in America needs to read.” ―Oprah’s Book Club “Ms. Raboteau doesn’t take the obvious route. She doesn’t delve into the coming water wars of the Western U.S. or spend time discussing carbon taxes or deforestation. The writing shines, instead, in the personal and cultural nuance, and the way they are inevitably intertwined with climate change and its inequality…She described her grandmother Mabel, who was forced to flee with her children from the Jim Crow south, in passages so delicate they seemed to float.” ― The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “Raboteau masterfully examines issues of climate injustice while making the essays intimate and accessible to the reader. The book is at once realistic in the face of daunting social and ecological crises, cautiously hopeful, and deeply humane.” ― Los Angeles Review of Books “ Lessons for Survival is a moving, meaningful read about how, in the midst of our most difficult crises, we maintain the strength to show up for ourselves and for one another.” ―Roxane Gay, The Audacity “This is scintillating work, an essential primer for our time