Bibliographies
Fiction/Non-Fiction Recommendations for American Environmental Justice Course
George Grattan <grattang@bc.edu>
Wed, 15 Sep 2004
Hello All,
Just got the green light for an upper-level undergrad "American Environmental
Justice Literature" course. It'll be a mix of fiction and non-fiction, with an emphasis on 20th Century works, and a mandate to include healthy representations of non-Euro-American traditions. I've got my own likely inclusions, but, as always, turn to the group for inspiration and tales from the field. My leading contenders at this point are: many of the offerings in Alison Deming's and Lauret Savoy's The Colors of Nature, Silko's Ceremony, Tempest-Williams' Refuge, Faulkner's Go Down, Moses, DeLillo's White Noise, Steinbeck's Cannery Row or The Grapes of Wrath, Octavia Butler's The Parable of the Sower, Carey McWilliams' Factories in the Field, maybe one of Barbara Neeley's mysteries, maybe one of Carl Hiassen's mysteries, and, of course, The Lorax on the first day of class...)
I welcome all suggestions, but am particularly interested in texts by Asian-
American, Chicano, Mestizo, Latino/a, and African-American authors that may have worked for you in similarly themed courses. Thanks in advance, and, yes, I'll post a compilation.
Shalom, Peace, Salaam,
George Grattan
grattang@bc.edu
English Department, Boston College
Urban Ecology Institute
www.urbaneco.org
Wed, 15 Sep 2004
Kelli Lyon Johnson <johnso58@muohio.edu>
George,
Chicana writer/activist Ana Castillo's novel So Far From God is worth
considering.
Kelli Lyon Johnson
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Miami University Hamilton
1601 University Blvd.
Hamilton, Ohio 45011
513-785-3036
johnso58@muohio.edu
www.users.muohio.edu/johnso58
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004
Quetchenbach, Bernard W <bquetchenbach@flsouthern.edu>
George
Though it is not quite as grand in conception as Ceremony, Linda Hogan's Power touches on some important issues of justice, including tribal justice.
For poems, how about Jimmy Santiago Baca's Black Mesa Poems or Simon Ortiz's "A Designated National Park"?
Bernie Quetchenbach
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004
From: "Cook, Barbara" <Barbara.Cook@EKU.EDU>
Castillo's book is great - there is also a mystery based in California by a Chicana writer entitled Cactus Blood. Any of Linda Hogan's books would work and the students usually love Mean Spirit.
Have fun!! Barbara
Barbara J. Cook
Visiting Assistant Professor
Eastern Kentucky University
Department of English and Theatre
467 Case Annex
Richmond, KY 40475
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004
From: Ann Fisher-Wirth <afwirth@olemiss.edu>
I strongly recommend Tom Franklin's book of short stories Poachers, especially "Dinosaurs." The whole book is wonderful. Also Janisse Ray's Ecology of a
Cracker Childhood.
well, definitely Solar Storms. And my students have always loved Solar Storms.
ann
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004
From: Wald, Sarah <Sarah_Wald@Brown.edu>
I would recomend Helena Maria Viramontes's novel Under the Feet of Jesus. It brings in issues of pesticide use and migrant farm labor in California.
From: Jjeansoko@aol.com
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004
Among works by Asian American authors, you might consider Ruth Ozeki's All
Over Creation and My Year of Meats.
Best,
Jeanne Sokolowski
Indiana University Bloomington
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004
Hanson, Katherine <KHanson@mariancollege.edu>
I would also like to recommend Linda Hogan's Solar Storms as well as Alice
Walker's Meridian and Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Dreams. There is an excellent essay in Winona LaDuke's nonfiction All My Relations that would work nicely with Solar Storms. Also several short stories in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven link to cancer on the reservation due to uranium mining which I think LaDuke also talks about in her collection.
Katherine Hanson
Diana L. Boeckmann <dianalb@iastate.edu>
Thu, 16 Sep 2004
There's a really strange short story called "Sin Eaters" in Sherman Alexie's
Toughest Indian in the World. I always wished I could teach it because it's so weird. I think it's about saving the world.
Diana L. Boeckmann
Department of English
Iowa State University
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2004
From: dwy5812syc@sprynet.com
George,
Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God has some very interesting environmental components that are often overlooked.
Choctaw/Cherokee author Louis Owens' novels The Sharpest Sight, Bone Game, and his earliest book, Wolfsong all have strong environmental messages. Wolfsong is the most overtly environmental, akin to Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang.
Maggie
From: Margo Tamez-Hrabovsky
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2004
Hi George!
Winona LaDuke: All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life (South End Press) and The Last Standing Woman.
Susanne Antonetta: Body Toxic: An Environmental Memoir (Counterpoint)
Sandra Steingraber: Having Faith
Arundhati Roy: War Talk (South End Press)
Barbara Neely: Blanche Cleans Up
Evelyn White: (official autobiographer of Alice Walker) At Home on This Earth:
Two Centuries of U.S. Women's Nature Writing. Her essay, "Black Women and the Wilderness" deals with fear of nature, making personal peace with nature and the rural/wild landscapes' representation of danger--a place of lynchings, rapes, murders, plantations/imprisonment/slavery. An amazing work of non-fiction. She and I were guests recently at the Center for Whole Communities at the Trust for Public Land in Vermont. We dialogued with other activists from around the nation for a week on many issues confronting us in the EJ and conservation movements. Her bold and intimate revelations about the penetrating scars and penetrating suffering associated with wild/rural places made a profound impression on all of us participating in that leadership retreat. I strongly recommend this essay.
Margo Tamez