Global Fictions and Environmental Disaster - (Environmental Cultures) by Martin Premoli (Hardcover)

About the Book

Examining contemporary literary depictions of environmental disasters through a North-South axis, this book explores the resonances and dissonances between environmentalisms of marginalized communities in the U.S. and the global South.

Book Synopsis

Examining contemporary literary depictions of environmental disasters through a North-South axis, this book explores the resonances and dissonances between environmentalisms of marginalized communities in the U.S. and the global South.

Pairing anti-colonial texts from the United States with examples from the Global South, it interrogates the complexity of global precarity and particular forms of environmental violence. Each pairing is linked to a specific manifestation of environmental disaster, such as hurricane, drought, species extinction, and agricultural collapse.

Featuring texts from authors such as Jesmyn Ward, Monique Roffey, Paolo Bacigalupi, Alexis Wright, Linda Hogan, Henrietta Rose-Innes, Ruth Ozeki, and Sonora Jha, this book models how a comparative (global North-global South) approach to literary studies can help us untangle the complex power dynamics and differentials of the Anthropocene.

Review Quotes

In a world marked by multiple escalating uncertainties and prone to proliferating 'abnatural' disasters, this book makes a compelling case for the capacity of narrative fiction to illuminate their root causes, afford orientation, and discern opportunities for resistance and survival. In so doing Global Fictions and Environmental Disaster admirably exemplifies the particular contribution of ecocritical literary studies, especially in the mode of comparative North-South enquiry, to the interdisciplinary weave of the global environmental humanities.

About the Author

Martin Premoli is Assistant Professor of English at Pepperdine University, in Malibu CA, USA.