Law and the Authoritarian Aesthetic of the American Lawn
Asmara M. Tekle
I. Intro
In his book Second Nature (Delta, 1992), Michael Pollan writes that at a certain moment in his childhood on Long Island, his dad decided to stop mowing the family’s suburban front lawn and let it grow to meadow. This decision to let the lawn get shaggy proved fateful and ominous, evoking stares, isolation and angry drive-bys reminiscent of the Klan in the 1950s.
In a final gesture of peace-making, the neighborhood sent an emissary, seemingly the last neighbor still talking to the family, to lay out the community’s concerns over this...
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