Environmental Futures - by Caren Irr & Anik Chartrand & Kurt Cavander & Roberto Forns-Broggi & Cajetan Iheka & Upamanyu Mukherjee & Irina Sadovina

About the Book

"This volume is an anthology of fiction and poems by authors from around the world that highlights the diversity of stories that flow from experiences of the natural world, giving particular emphasis to those that wrestle with the legacy of colonialism and its approach to nature as a resource to be exploited"--

Book Synopsis

A global anthology, curated by experts from around the world, draws on fiction and poetry to examine environmental challenges and their implications for communities.

Featuring short stories, poetry, drama, and creative nonfiction from around the world, this anthology showcases contemporary literature to envision the future of the environment. While environmental literature written in English has been dominated by English and American men who make solo explorations into an unspoiled natural world, Environmental Futures emphasizes local and indigenous writers contending with global landscapes that are far from pristine. Their work opens up decolonial perspectives from Anglophone Africa, South Asia, India, China, South America, the peripheries of Europe, and BIPoC North America. Introducing many writers who will be unfamiliar to English-speaking readers, this collection explores resistance to the oil economy, the impact of storms and natural disasters, extinction, and relations between humans and animals, among other themes.

The pieces are organized by geographical area in five sections: Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America. Expert scholars and translators--Kurt Cavender, Roberto Forns-Broggi, Cajetan Iheka, Upamanyu (Pablo) Mukherjee, Irina Sadovina, and Shaobo Xie--selected the works and provided critical introductions for each section.

Review Quotes

"This book is a winner. There's nothing like it currently available for readers and instructors--nothing even close. It provides a range of texts never before available in English and puts these in dialogue with ones which have been available." --Imre Szeman, director of the Institute for Environment, Conservation and Sustainability, University of Toronto Scarborough

About the Author

Caren Irr is professor of English and the Kevy and Hortense Kaiserman Professor of Humanities at Brandeis University. She is the author or editor of five previous books, among them Toward the Geopolitical Novel: U.S. Fiction in the Twenty-First Century and The Suburb of Dissent: Cultural Politics in the United States and Canada during the 1930s.