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OverviewAn analysis of the political and ecological consequences of charting the Amazon River basin in narrative fiction, Mapping the Amazon examines how widely read novels from twentieth-century South America attempted to map the region for readers. Authors such as José Eustasio Rivera, Rómulo Gallegos, Mario Vargas Llosa, César Calvo, Márcio Souza, and Mário de Andrade travelled to the Amazonian regions of their respective countries and encountered firsthand a forest divided and despoiled by the spatial logic of extractivism. Writing against that logic, they fill their novels with geographic, human, and ecological realities omitted from official accounts of the region. Though the plots unfold after the height of the Amazon rubber boom (1850–1920), the authors construct landscapes marked by that first large-scale exploitation of Amazonian biodiversity. The material practices of rubber extraction resurface in the stories told about the removal of other plants, seeds, and minerals from the forest as well as its conversion into farmland. Smith places the counter-discursive impulses of each novel in dialogue with various modernizing projects that carve Amazonia into cultural and economic spaces: border commissions, extractive infrastructure, school geography manuals, Indigenous education programs, and touristic propaganda. Even the “novel maps” studied, however, have blind spots, and Mapping the Amazon considers the legacy of such unintentional omissions today. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Amanda M. SmithPublisher: Liverpool University Press Imprint: Liverpool University Press Volume: 8 ISBN: 9781800348417ISBN 10: 180034841 Pages: 264 Publication Date: 01 May 2021 Audience: General/trade , General Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: In Print This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us. Table of ContentsReviewsMapping the Amazon: Literary Geography After the Rubber Boom navigates the complexity of Amazonian literature with intelligence and deftness. With theoretical sophistication and an ethical commitment to contextualizing her material historically and geographically, Amanda Smith has produced lucid new readings of Jose Eustasio Rivera, Romulo Gallegos, Mario Vargas Llosa, Cesar Calvo, and Marcio Souza. The final discussion is a beautiful, unexpectedly affirming conclusion to a book full of sharp critical insights. Jennifer L. French, Williams College Author InformationAmanda M. Smith is an Assistant Professor of Latin American Literature in the Department of Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |