Rachel Carson and the Power of Queer Love by Lida Maxwell

A new series of book recommendations by Local Author & New Forest Writer in Residence Yarrow Townsend

The publication of Rachel Carson and the Power of Queer Love by Lida Maxwell this month is perfectly timed for LGBTQIA+ History Month and Valentine’s Day. I’d been keenly waiting for this book since it was announced – and I’m glad to say that I was so enamoured with it that I just had to start writing reviews for October Books in order to share the love – as I think many of you will enjoy it just as much as I did.

Queer women who write about nature are more common than you might think. Some of our most celebrated writers – like poet Mary Oliver and Tove Jansson of Moomins fame – had lifelong relationships with women – as did writer and biologist Rachel Carson. Unsurprisingly, biographies and academic writing about these women often neglect these relationships, the women’s queerness, and how it influenced the way they saw the world around them.

In Rachel Carson and The Power of Queer Love, Lida Maxwell explores how Carson’s relationship with her neighbour, Dorothy Freeman, was the main driving force behind her environmental activism – and that throughout her life, this relationship allowed her to understand and expose just how damaging capitalism is for the planet.

In 1962, Carson published Silent Spring, exposing the toxic effects of the pesticide DDT. Carson’s writing launched environmental activism into the mainstream. Maxwell explains that she never would have been able to write this book without Dorothy – their love and their shared intimacy with nature fuelled Carson’s creativity and activism:

‘Their love was also at the emotional core of why Carson wrote the book in the first place. Carson and Freeman especially shared a love of the veery, a species of thrush whose two-toned call creates a feeling of otherworldliness for the listener. Throughout the decade or more of their relationship (until Carson’s death from breast cancer in 1964) they would write about the veery’s song, about wanting to listen to it together, about searching for it and hearing it in special places.’

Maxwell tells us that queer love is not just about who we love. It’s how. It's seeing the joy and inherent value in the world, rather than the potential for exploitation. Carson’s love for Dorothy Freeman was liberating in the wake of 50s America with all of its capitalist hopes and dreams. Carson defied expectations about the way women were meant to live and love. This meant she was also able to defy the expectation that human beings exploit nature for their own gain.  

Maxwell argues that queer love might just be our biggest weapon in the fight for climate justice. Queer love means interrogating capitalism, and the expectations that come with it – in particular, heteronormativity – the idea that (straight or queer) we must all couple up, consume, buy houses, and pay for things like weddings, children, discounted couple-only memberships (and Valentine's meals out!)

Maxwell’s book is a brilliantly intersectional work that looks at how capitalism cuts us off from community and embeds us in colonialist relationship dynamics: all at the expense of nature. It’s also a hugely uplifting read, showing us how our lives can become significantly more positive through our relationships with community and non-human nature. It’s also filled with beautiful lines from Carson’s letters – such as this one:

'The Sea brought me recognition and what the world calls success. It brought me Southport. It brought me You. So now the sea means something to me that it never meant before.’ This is a radical and accessibly written book that I’d recommend to all my friends – straight and queer.

An afternote: Rachel Carson’s writing has been a longtime influence on my own. I used her writing about the sea to help with writing A Ship in the Dark – an environmental tale about bird migration and exploitation of the sea  - and I also borrowed the last name Carson for Orla in The Map of Leaves. More information available here: https://yarrowtownsend.substack.com