TEACH-IN: Tending The Vines: Black Abundance in Eight Plants w/ Ashia Ajani

Join Rep Club for a teach-in on 'Tending The Vines: Black Abundance in Eight Plants' by author Ashia S. Ajani WHO & WHAT: Join Rep Club for a teach-in on 'Tending The Vines: Black Abundance in Eight Plants' by author Ashia S. Ajani. Come learn about native, nonnative, and invasive plant classification and its intersections with environmental racism, Afro-diasporic ecological knowledge, and world (un)making. Discussing excerpts from Tending the Vines: Black Abundance in Eight Plants (Timber Press, 2026), author-researcher Ashia Ajani makes a case for interpreting the lived realities of Black people in the Western Hemisphere through appreciating the complexity of plant insurgency and its implications for more tender living among the decline of Empire. WHEN: Doors at 12:30pm, event promptly at 1pm. WHERE: Reparations Club, 3054 S. Victoria Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90016 HOW: TICKET w/ BOOK: This ticket guarantees entry, including a signed book available for pick up at the event. FREE RSVP (No Book Included): This Free RSVP DOES NOT include a copy of the book and entry is based strictly on capacity at the door. Books may be available for purchase in-store. SIGNED BOOK ONLY: Can't make it IRL but still want a signed copy? Order directly from our site! Please email us at [email protected] if you have any additional needs, questions, or accessibility concerns. About the Book: THIS STANDOUT CREATIVE NONFICTION DEBUT EXPLORES THE LIVES AND HISTORIES OF PLANTS CONSIDERED NONNATIVE OR INVASIVE AS METAPHORS FOR THE BLACK EXPERIENCE IN AMERICA. In Tending the Vines, Ashia S. Ajani illuminates how eight unique plants tell the story of the Black diaspora in America. Each chapter is a deep dive into one plant--including eucalyptus, passionflower, wild mustard, and kudzu--exploring their significance in African tradition, their role through the Middle Passage and Chattel Slavery, and their enduring importance in modern households and communities. Tending the Vines unpacks the complex rhetorical lives of these plants, most of which have been used as both ugly metaphors for Black incursion as well as powerful symbols for Black liberation. It also highlights the ethnobotanical uses that have sustained displaced populations for centuries. Throughout, Ajani complicates our notions of "invasive" and belonging, by contextualizing how plants move, are moved, and, of course, move us. ASHIA S. AJANI is a storyteller and environmental educator born and raised in Denver, CO, unceded territory of the Arapahoe, Cheyenne, and Ute peoples. Their work has appeared in Sierra Magazine, Orion Magazine, Callaloo Literary Journal, and Atmos Literary Magazine, among others. Heirloom (Write Bloody Publishing, 2023) was their debut poetry collection.