Melissa DeSa’s eyes welled with tears as she read a story aloud about the journey of Seminole pumpkin seeds in Florida across the past 500 years.
She passed around pumpkin seeds and encouraged audience members to close their eyes as they listened to her story.
“As I tell you a story about the seed that's in your hand, I encourage you to really feel it,” she said, “to notice the margins, notice the texture, feel the energy that comes from all of that stored life that's inside this tiny little being.”
DeSa connected her story to that of “The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World,” a nonfiction book that uses the serviceberry plant to highlight Indigenous beliefs.
She spoke of the pumpkin seeds’ reciprocity — how it gives and how it receives.
“One plant becomes an abundance of flowers and fruit, and inside the fruit, dozens of more seeds, a gift of true abundance,” she said. “But the plant is not giving from nowhere.”
DeSa, the seed and garden director at Working Food, a nonprofit focused on creating a north central Florida food community, was one of two speakers during the Gainesville Reads kickoff Friday evening.
Gainesville Reads is an annual monthlong reading festival hosted by The Lynx Books. This year’s festival is centered around “The Serviceberry,” written by Indigenous scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer.
Following DeSa’s speech, attendees painted bookmarks with natural pigments grown by Working Food, read excerpts from the novel and wrote down what they give to and receive from the community.
Alyssa Sheets, a 26-year-old assistant technician in environmental sciences at WSP, said she heard about the kickoff after attending the Lynx’s Tuesday event with John Green.
Sheets said the book relates to Gainesville's natural environment.
“There's so much nature to protect here,” she said, “and it's so hyperlocalized that things like this really bring so much of us together back to a common ground and theme that is always running throughout the town.”
Madelyn Diller, the Lynx’s events and community relations manager, echoed the sentiment.
“It's creating a shared language, finding community,” Diller said, “and then learning how to be involved in these spaces and places that care for the earth and for one another.”
The kickoff was just the beginning of the reading festival. The Lynx will host 14 other events around Gainesville, partnering with nonprofits like Florida Springs Council and Alachua Conservation Trust.
The events will help connect community members with like-minded individuals and organizations, Diller said.
The festival will culminate in a keynote event sponsored in part by Visit Gainesville and Alachua County. Kimmerer, who wrote “The Serviceberry,” will speak at the Curtis M. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts at UF Oct. 25.
Contact Grace Larson at glarson@alligator.org. Follow her on X @graceellarson.
Grace Larson is a second-year journalism student and this Fall's metro editor. This is her fourth consecutive semester on the metro desk, having previously served as commission reporter, K-12 education reporter and editor. If she's not editing an article, you can probably find Grace working out, antiquing or crafting.
