Parents 4 Climate Book Club

In person book discussion about Hot Mess: Mothering Through a Code Red Climate Emergency with Sarah Marie Wiebe  – Thursday April 3rd 6:30 to 8:30

If you’re interested in themes of parenting through the climate crisis and centring care, connection and community as a way to address the climate crisis, then this discussion is for you!  RSVP to p4c@forourkids.ca

All are welcome to join Parents 4 Climate for a friendly in person discussion of Hot Mess: Mothering Through a Code Red Climate Emergency, with Sarah Marie Wiebe. Kate Lawes, from Parents 4 Climate, will facilitate the discussion and lead an art making activity based on the themes that come out of our discussion.  Each chapter is its own vignette – feel free to join if you’ve read only part of the book, or if you’re just interested in exploring these themes.

When: Thursday, April 3rd

Time: 6:30pm to 8:30pm

Length: 2 hours

RSVP for location to: p4c@forourkids.ca

FIRST 4 to RSVP will be given a free copy of Sarah’s book!

Or go to Fernwood Publishing, Ivy Book’s, Bolen Books, Munro’s and more.  There is also an audiobook version coming at the end of this month.

About the book: 

“No longer is the climate emergency purely an external threat to our wellbeing: this profoundly political circumstance is deeply personal. The summer after giving birth, Sarah Marie Wiebe and her baby endured the 2021 heat dome in British Columbia, with temperatures over 20 degrees above normal, creating all-time heat records across the province. It was the deadliest weather event in Canadian history. The extreme heat landed Wiebe in the hospital, dehydrated and separated from her nursing baby from dawn until dusk. So began a year of mothering through heat, fires and floods. The climate emergency’s many incarnations shaped Wiebe’s politics of parenting and revealed the layers, textures and nuances of the disastrous emergencies we encounter in a world dominated by extractive capitalism.

Drawing on hospital codes to explore the connections, Wiebe opens up tender conversations about intimate matters of how our bodies respond to emergency interventions: informed consent, emergency C-sections, reproductive mental health, and anti-colonial and anti-racist resistance. A critical ecofeminist scholar, Wiebe invites collective envisioning and enacting of caring, ethical relations between humans and the planet, including our atmospheres, lands, waters, animals, plants and each other.”

About the author:

Dr. Sarah Marie Wiebe (she/her) grew up on unceded Coast Salish territory in British Columbia, BC, is the mother of a three-year old and an author of the recently published Hot Mess: Mothering through a Code Red Climate Emergency. She is an Assistant Professor in the School of Public Administration at the University of Victoria and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Hawai’i, Mānoa as well as a Co-Founder of the FERN Collaborative. Her research focuses on community development and environmental sustainability. At the intersections of environmental justice and public engagement, her teaching and research interests emphasize political ecology, policy justice and deliberative dialogue. As a collaborative researcher and filmmaker, she worked with Indigenous communities on sustainability-themed films including To Fish as Formerly. She collaborated with artists from Attawapiskat on a project entitled Reimgining Attawapiskat which is a companion website to her recent book Life against States of Emergency: Revitalizing Treaty Relations from Attawapiskat. Dr. Wiebe is also the author of Everyday Exposure: Indigenous Mobilization and Environmental Justice in Canada’s Chemical Valley (2016). For more about Dr. Wiebe’s research see: https://www.sarahmariewiebe.com/.