Beronda Montgomery on Memoir as Testimony

This week’s show is a nuanced exploration of the various and creative ways memoir can be an exploration of identity, culture, and history, and how in unearthing our own stories, we can discover so much about the world around us. Guest Beronda Montgomery has written a thoughtful and “thinking” memoir that has us ruminating on trees, legacy, ancestors, and who gets and is denied credit in our society. We learned so much from reading this book, and gained so much from being in conversation with Beronda. In the book trend this week, we talk about shorter books—the financial and attentional reason shorter might be better. Beronda L. Montgomery, PhD, is a writer, researcher, and scholar who pursues a common theme of understanding how individuals perceive, respond to, and are impacted by the environments in which they exist. Her primary laboratory-based research has been focused on the responses of photosynthetic organisms, like plants, react to external light cues. Beronda is author of two books When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom, History, and America’s Black Botanical Legacy and Lessons From Plants. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.