Welcome to the Curiosity Coven Book Club! We're a community of witches and environmentalists who share a commitment to living more consciously—making choices that honor our bodies, our health, and the planet we all share. Follow along for monthly book recommendations and reading discussions.
June Book Club Pick: The Smell of Risk by Hsuan Hsu
The Smell of Risk: Environmental Disparities and Olfactory Aesthetics outlines the many ways that our differentiated atmospheres unevenly distribute environmental risk.
Reading everything from nineteenth-century detective fiction and naturalist novels to contemporary performance art and memoir, Hsu takes up modernity’s differentiated atmospheres as a subject worth sniffing out.
From the industrial revolution to current-day environmental crises, Hsu uses ecocriticism, geography, and critical race studies to, for example, explore Latinx communities exposed to freeway exhaust and pesticides, Asian diasporic artists’ response to racialized discourse about Asiatic odors, and the devastation settler colonialism has reaped on Indigenous smellscapes. In each instance, Hsu demonstrates the violence that air maintenance, control, and conditioning enacts on the poor and the marginalized.
From nineteenth-century miasma theory to the synthetic chemicals that pervade twenty-first century air, Hsu takes smell at face value to offer an evocative retelling of urbanization, public health, and environmental violence.
Your Reading Companion: Herbal Renewal Candle
Handcrafted with pure lavender and rosemary essential oils, Herbal Renewal features a timeless, classic aroma blend that will transport you to a breezy field of sun-warmed flowers in a calming mountain meadow.
Set your space aglow with the Herbal Renewal candle, or try the 3oz mini candle to bring your sanctuary on the road.
Book Club Discussion Questions: The Smell of Risk
- How do environmental pollutants and industrial byproducts—like those in the Clare chemical plant—create unevenly distributed "smellscapes" across different communities?
- How do systemic inequalities dictate who is forced to live with the "smell of risk" and who has access to odorless, conditioned air?
- How have artists and writers used the sense of smell to fight back against racialized stereotypes of "stinks" and "odors"?
- How can olfactory art or literature make the invisible—like toxins, pollution, or airborne diseases—viscerally real to audiences?
- Why has Western philosophy traditionally prioritized sight and hearing over smell?
Join the Conversation
Please support your local library or independent bookstore to find the book! Once you've finished, join the discussion in the comments below, or continue the conversation on Instagram or Reddit.
If you loved it, continue the rest of the series (and check out the blockbuster movies, if you haven't already).
Happy reading!
—The Sea Witches
