We sat down with author Catherine Young to talk about the inspiration for her literary memoir of place, growing up among extractive industry, and sharing stories as a resource to help future generations. 

 Torrey House Press: Hi Catherine! We're thrilled that Black Diamonds is now available everywhere. Let's jump right in to discussing the book. Black Diamonds is a literary memoir, with reflections of place, art, and extractive industry. What events or people inspired you to write your book?

Catherine Young: When my first child was young, I began telling him stories of where I come from—a place that no longer exists—a place that disappeared within the first ten years of my life. Within the timeframe between the late 1950s and the early 1970s, a way of life vanished, and a city diminished as it burned down and fell into the mines. This was an astonishing time to be a child. I grew up in the 19th century, with people who held onto ways of life no longer existing in Europe and America. As mining ended, and as my elders passed away very quickly in the 1960s, a damaged city, mine waste, and collieries were abandoned. Once I began telling the stories to my first child, they rose thick and fast, and I had to catch them and get them down on paper before they too, vanished.

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THP: That's really powerful—to be raising a child, and to meanwhile be reflecting on your childhood. Can you tell us more about how you think landscape and environment shaped you as a child?

Catherine: As a child, I watched my coal mining city burn above and below ground. The air was saturated with smoke, and when it rained, we breathed sulfuric acid. There was a post in the New York Times in about 1964 that documented our reality as having the most poisonous area in the country, that in one fog inversion, paint peeled from cars, and laundry hung out to dry for a few hours came back in with holes as if moth-eaten. Having grown up in the devastated extractive environment of coal mining in the valley where the Industrial Revolution began in North America, I experienced firsthand the stress of economic and educational poverty while witnessing poverty of spirit. Keeping people from meeting their needs creates desperation which pushes them to destructive behaviors for earth and for one another. 

As a child in a coal mining valley on the first Earth Day, I knew the environmental movement was where I belonged. I chose my educational path toward sciences, always focusing on ecology and story of place. I have discovered in my long life so far that to inspire, to activate stewardship, my work has to engage with art—that human beings need to express and be heard, and that this is a way forward to reconnecting with earth and spirit and one another. Concern for earth, spirit, and society are infused in all the work that I have achieved over the past forty-five years.

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THP: Who were your role models as a child? And who are your role models now?

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Catherine: I grew up among many old relatives and neighbors who were immigrants having fled losses in Europe and who sought a better life. I listened to the stories of their struggles and their hopes. I learned to listen to people stories and our histories to understand survival and what we can do better. I learned that stories and storytelling are essential features of being human.

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My writing has been greatly influenced by Aldo Leopold, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Robin Wall Kimmerer. I have the great honor of having one of my pieces selected for an anthology among these heroes. I also love the deeply thoughtful science-driven spiritually-shaken writing of Annie Dillard and Loren Eisley. I was mentored by the environmental writer, former NBC producer and author of the memoir The Land Remembers Ben Logan—who had also influenced Aldo Leopold’s writing of A Sand County Almanac. I am grateful for and inspired by the writing of Robin Wall Kimmerer whose gratitude permeates everything she does.

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THP: We’ve recently started to talk about Torrey House Press's work as “books the world needs.” What are your hopes and dreams for Black Diamonds now that it is published?

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Catherine: Black Diamonds is a personal story of the destruction created by the use of fossil fuels, and it is a testament to the need for environmental stewardship through renewable energy. I would like Black Diamonds to be read again and again, gaining attention and accruing notoriety. Like A Sand County Almanac did, I hope this book will inspire a chapter in the Ecology/Environmental Movement—this chapter to eliminate fossil fuel use and hidden valleys of production. I would like Black Diamonds used in school classrooms and places of higher education across North America to initiate discussions of choices we can make to meet needs and the consequences of haste. The story of how industrialism began is an essential piece of our history and can be a tool as we prepare the healing for the next seven generations. 

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I would like readers to consider that often the histories we are told, or that are put into books or media, are shaped and limited, and that we must seek a broader perspective. The toxicity of my place of origin remains in the soil and in the thinking. We must understand how extractive economies are the epitome of colonization and how these economies pillage land, culture, and just and sustainable livelihood.

I would also like readers to come to the realization that we must consider where we come from and how we have gotten to the difficulties of this point in time. I would want each of us to consider the choices we and our elders have made, along with the ones our country has made, in order to move forward and heal our earth.