Overview

Deserts are highly emblematic spaces: dry, barren, isolated. In literary and cinematic representations, they often betoken collapse and dystopia. Reading Aridity in Western American Literature offer readings of literature set in the US Southwest from ecocritical and new materialist perspectives. The volume explores the diverse epistemologies, histories, relationships, futures, and possibilities that emerge from the representation of American deserts in fiction, film, and literary art. The authors, as well, trace the social, cultural, economic, and biotic narratives that foreground deserts, and how these underscore the challenges of climate change, ecojustice, and human and non-human flourishing. As such, the volume rethinks what deserts are and provides a constructive lens for seeing deserts as more than blank spaces, rather as ecogeographies that challenge, critique, and urge collective ecojustice action.

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9781793622013

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Reviews

'Reading aridity', in this impressive volume of 'desert ecocriticism, ' means reading desert-related texts in order to improve our understanding and appreciation of the cultural and ecological dimensions of the dry regions of the American West. Improving our desert literacy is important no matter where we live. Not only will currently temperate places likely face serious drought conditions in coming years due to global climate change, but the act of improving our sensitivity to desert subtleties is a profound and painstaking exercise that will better enable us to know any other kind of landscape. Australian Aboriginal writer Jack Davis once wrote, 'Some call it desert / But it is full of life / pulsating life.' The articles in Reading Aridity demonstrate how careful attention to desert texts and desert ecologies brings this pulsating life--and the vibrancy of so many other landscapes--into meaningful focus.--Scott Slovic, University of Idaho, editor of Getting Over the Color Green Reading Aridity in Western American Literature offers multiple new ways of thinking about deserts and our responsibilities to them. While the essayists begin with the concept that Anglo settlers projected their assumptions on deserts and many representations are socially constructed, they insist on seeing them as animate and vibrant, not just things awaiting interpretation. Using a variety of critical approaches--ecocriticism, material culture studies, Indigenous studies, historical mapping--they explore landscapes 'rich in story.' And this fine, well written collection is a pleasure for anyone to read.--Melody Graulich, Utah State University Rich, varied, and deeply engaged, the essays in this collection do urgent and exciting work. They illuminate the desert West's cultural and ecological complexity, reveal the environmental costs of its colonization and settlement, and offer creative strategies for promoting environmental awareness. An essential contribution to the fields of Western American and ecocritical literary studies.--Audrey Goodman, Georgia State University This timely and important book is a collection of arid essays--in the best, most compelling sense. These works grab us by the shoulders and turn our faces toward aridity, toward desert landscapes in the American West that are ancient, richly diverse ecosystems and toward places not previously deserts that are now evolving into something newly arid because of climate change. Contributors range backward and forward in time, engaging canonical texts and sci fi, Chicano gothic and indigenous memoir, the National Atomic Museum in Albuquerque and the reflections of French travelers encountering Western American aridity for the first time. Sharply written and beautifully edited, Reading Aridity in Western Literature is a haunting, illuminating look at how we live with and write about landscapes that are the opposite of the color green.--Sara Spurgeon, Texas Tech University

Author Information

Jada Ach is a lecturer for the leadership and integrative studies program at Arizona State University. Gary Reger is Hobart professor of classical languages at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.

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