Here are a few books with environmental themes that we’ve been reading this month.

Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation by Eli Clare is an older book; it came out in 1999, and has been reissued a few times with additional author notes and material from contributors. It is a lovely and reflective read, weaving together the author’s lived experience of disability and queerness with moments of environmental connection and disconnection, highlighting the complexity of how we experience our bodies and sense of place. —Sara

Saltcrop by Yume Kitasei takes place in a possible climate future where crop blight is barely held in bay by an ag-tech product that causes mutations and illness from prolonged exposure. Two sisters embark on a weeks-long sea voyage to find their third sister, who they suspect is a would-be whistleblower imprisoned by an ag-tech giant with a monopoly on both seeds and pesticides. There’s corporate espionage, pirates, and the dangers of a garbage-strewn world on the brick of famine–but also glimpses of hope. —Sara

A Natural History of Empty Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys, and Other Wild Places by Christopher Brown. I first learned of Christopher Brown as a science fiction writer (his dystopian Tropic of Kansas features a Minnesota in revolt), and his memoir A Natural History of Empty Lots places an environmental lens over our world today. As he describes building a sustainable home an industrial, marginal pocket of Austin, Brown explores how nothing is really wild, and yet nowhere is fully colonized by humanity. This book changed how I think about urban spaces—what they are now, and what they could be in the future, and how we can relate to them in a healthy, honest, and forward-thinking way. —Stephanie