Sept 2025 GreenUp MeetUp: The Serviceberry Book Club w/ Friends of the Forestdale Arboretum

Name: Sept 2025 GreenUp MeetUp: The Serviceberry Book Club w/ Friends of the Forestdale Arboretum
Start: 2025-09-07T14:00:00-04:00
End: 2025-09-07T15:30:00-04:00
Location: Prep Hero

Schedule

Sun Sep 07 2025 at 02:00 pm to 03:30 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

Prep Hero | Malden, MA

We will read The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in The Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer (100 1/2 page size pocket book) and discuss it at the BRAND NEW Prep Hero Cafe in Maplewood Square, 43 Lebanon St, Malden, MA from 2PM-3:30PM. The Cafe has excellent coffee! and food! and they encourage us to come hungry and support their local business. Has ADA bathroom. Please reply coming to this event to RSVP and please reach out with any questions or special needs you may have! We can try out a hybrid format if we get requests for it.
More about the book here: www.robinwallkimmerer.com/books
More about the cafe and menu here: www.prep-hero.com
Find your host, The Urban Biodiversity Alliance, here: www.facebook.com/groups/theurbanbiodiversityalliance
Book Overview:
An Instant New York Times Bestseller
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass, a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world.
As Indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from Indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love. Meanwhile, the serviceberry's relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity, interconnectedness, and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth--its abundance of sweet, juicy berries--to meet the needs of its natural community. And this distribution ensures its own survival. As Kimmerer explains, "Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency."
As Elizabeth Gilbert writes, Robin Wall Kimmerer is "a great teacher, and her words are a hymn of love to the world." The Serviceberry is an antidote to the broken relationships and misguided goals of our times, and a reminder that "hoarding won't save us, all flourishing is mutual."
Robin Wall Kimmerer is donating her advance payments from this book as a reciprocal gift, back to the land, for land protection, restoration, and justice.