Children of the Land - Kincentric Parenting at Soul Fire Farm

A trailblazing parenting book centering ecological kinship and social justice by Leah Penniman, author of Farming While Black, co-authored with her daughter, Neshima Vitale-Penniman.

Foreword by adrienne maree brown.

Parenting has the radical potential to move us toward collective liberation. Children of the Land offers a powerful way forward—a kincentric approach to raising a family fluent in land stewardship, mutual care, and social action. Part community memoir, part guide, Children of the Land tells the stories of young people raised on an Afro-Indigenous-centered farm in upstate New York—Soul Fire Farm—dedicated to embodying the ancestral dream that “another world is possible.”

Children of the Land glows with the shared insights and radical love of a mother, her child, and the land that sustains them. At the heart of their family’s stories—from home birth through puberty rites, collective farming to empty nesting—is an irresistible invitation to embrace the Earth as lifelong companion and kin. The Pennimans convey an honest, reverent window into their community’s child-rearing journeys through richly descriptive storytelling, woven with scientific and eco-spiritual insights from African, Indigenous, and Western knowledge systems. You are invited to join them as they gather seasons of harvests, build their straw bale home, take to the streets for justice, and honor the spirits of the land. Whether you live in the city or the country—or have children or not—Children of the Land offers guidance for living a life rooted in interdependence, compassion, and liberatory world-building.