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Converging Stories
Race, Ecology, And Environmental Justice In American Literature
by Jeffrey Myers (Author)

Racism and environmental destruction as convergent literary themes

In American literature, our discourse on the themes of race and ecology is too narrowly focused on the twentieth century and does not adequately take into account how these themes are interrelated, argues Jeffrey Myers. His new study broadens the field by looking at writings from the nineteenth century. This was an era, Myers reminds us, of renewed violence and oppression against people of color and of unprecedented environmental destruction on a continental scale. Myers focuses particularly on works that engage the notion that white racism and alienation from nature sprang from a common source.

Myers first discusses the paradox of Thomas Jefferson’s agrarian vision, by which ideas espoused in his Notes on the State of Virginia can support either environmental destruction or conservation, a democratic or a racist society. Next, by looking race-critically at Thoreau’s Walden and The Maine Woods, then ecocritically at Charles Chesnutt’s The Conjure Woman and Zitkala-Sa’s Old Indian Legends and American Indian Stories, Myers traces the development of a new resistance to racial and ecological hegemony. He concludes by discussing how the antiracist, egalitarian ecocentricity in these earlier writers can be seen in contemporary writer Eddy L. Harris’s Mississippi Solo. Myers’s discussion encompasses other authors as well, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Muir, and Willa Cather.

By looking at works by Native Americans, African Americans, European Americans, and others, and by considering forms of literature beyond the traditional nature essay, Myers expands our conceptions of environmental writing and environmental justice.
 

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A Far-Off Place
by Laurens van der Post (Author)

Review
'With a loving, mystical awareness of the physical world, Colonel van der Post creates a compelling vision of small human creatures against a vast landscape...An infinitely subtle book' (Sunday Telegraph - Janice Elliot)

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High Jungles and Low
by Archie F. Carr (Author)

"Illuminated by the same joyful curiosity and erudition, lyric writing, and plain love of life that made a classic of Archie Carr’s The Windward Road."--Peter Matthiessen
 

"Archie Carr shows that he can write about people and forests engagingly and accurately without recourse to fake adventures or gringo condescension."--New York Times
 

Archie Carr’s story is his love for the rural high tropics of Central America, revealed with grace and humor in the personal account of the years (1945-49) that he spent in Honduras with his family as a teacher at the Agricultural School run by the United Fruit Company.

 High Jungles and Low has four parts, each written in a distinctive style. "The Land" is descriptive and includes a candid chapter on Yankee relations with Latin America. "People in the Land" is anecdotal, with sketches of the hill people of Honduras. "The Sweet Sea," a short history of Nicaragua, reveals the biological drama of four centuries of turmoil in that country. "Hall of the Mountain Cow" is Carr’s one-month diary of a 100-mile walk along the Mosquito Shore, the rain forest of the Caribbean coast.
 

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Intimate Nature
The Bond Between Women and Animals

by Barbara Peterson (Author), Brenda Peterson (Author), Deena Metzger (Author)

From Library Journal
This book brings together stories, poems, essays, and meditations by the editors and more than 70 other prominent female nature writers and field scientists, including Gretel Ehrlich, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Terry Tempest Williams, to show how women are reestablishing their relationship with animals on a basis of respect and empathy. Wildlife researchers like Jane Goodall or Cynthia Moss integrate compassion and intuition with the data they report. Native American women explore the wisdom of tribal elders for lessons on sharing the earth with animals. Women who have nurtured or trained individual animals recount, sometimes humorously, how they learned to communicate across the species barrier. All the contributors celebrate animals as our peers on this planet; many also warn against the loneliness and silence of the wasteland we are creating as we push ever more species to the brink of extinction. This collection should appeal to young adults as well as general adult readers. Recommended for academic and public libraries.?Joan S. Elbers, formerly Montgomery Coll., Rockville, Md.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
 

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Ishmael
An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit
by Daniel Quinn

From Publishers Weekly
Quinn ( Dreamer ) won the Turner Tomorrow Award's half-million-dollar first prize for this fascinating and odd book--not a novel by any conventional definition--which was written 13 years ago but could not find a publisher. The unnamed narrator is a disillusioned modern writer who answers a personal ad ("Teacher seeks pupil. . . . Apply in person.") and thereby meets a wise, learned gorilla named Ishmael that can communicate telepathically. The bulk of the book consists entirely of philosophical dialogues between gorilla and man, on the model of Plato's Republic. Through Ishmael, Quinn offers a wide-ranging if highly general examination of the history of our civilization, illuminating the assumptions and philosophies at the heart of many global problems. Despite some gross oversimplifications, Quinn's ideas are fairly convincing; it's hard not to agree that unrestrained population growth and an obsession with conquest and control of the environment are among the key issues of our times. Quinn also traces these problems back to the agricultural revolution and offers a provocative rereading of the biblical stories of Genesis. Though hardly any plot to speak of lies behind this long dialogue, Quinn's smooth style and his intriguing proposals should hold the attention of readers interested in the daunting dilemmas that beset our planet. 50,000 first printing; major ad/promo.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to the Hardcover edition
 

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Literature for Composition
Essays, Fiction, Poetry, and Drama (8th Edition)
by Sylvan Barnet (Author), William E. Burto (Author), William E. Cain (Author)

From the Back Cover
Literature for Composition offers the finest writing and argument coverage, helpful discussions of the literary elements, compelling case studies, and a diverse array of selections. The book includes complete coverage of the writing process, three chapters devoted to argument, complete chapters on interpretation and evaluation, coverage of the literary elements and the study of visual images, and case studies. The book opens with five chapters devoted to reading, writing, and argument. An entire chapter on critical thinking equips readers with a foundation upon which to study the chapters on the literary forms that follow. An anthology is organized around six engaging themes. Special chapters on visuals and film along with ten case studies offer additional resources. For those interested in the study and composition of literature. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
 

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My Year of Meats
by Ruth L. Ozeki

From Library Journal
As a writer, Ozeki draws upon her knowledge in documentary filmmaking cleverly to bring the worlds of two women together by utilizing the U.S. meat industry as a central link. Alternating between the voices of Jane (in the United States) and Akiko Ueno, the wife of Jane's boss (in Japan), Ozeki draws parallels in the lives of these two women through beef, love, television, and their desire to have children. Ozeki skillfully tackles hard-pressing issues such as the use and effects of hormones in the beef industry and topics such as cultural differences, gender roles, and sexual exploitation. Her work is unique in presentation yet moving and entertaining. Highly recommended for general fiction collections. [BOMC alternate selection.]?Shirley N. Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Stanton, C.
-?Shirley N. Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Stanton, CA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
 

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Once Were Warriors
by Alan Duff

From Publishers Weekly
Part of Hawaii's Talanoa Contemporary Pacific Literature imprint, this first novel won the 1991 PEN Best First Book Award amid controversy over Duff's perceived condemnation of Maori society as largely responsible for the hopelessness plaguing its communities. In a Maori ghetto of urban New Zealand, Jake and Beth Heke battle entrenched poverty, racism and other ills that overwhelm their traditional Maori culture. With a gritty, realistic eye, Duff portrays Jake and Beth, who because of alcoholism, abuse and poverty can provide little protection against the gangs, drugs and violence that menace their children. Most vulnerable is Grace who dreams of escape into the Pakeha (white) world and whose brutal rape triggers the downward spiral of events. Duff's choppy sentences, repeated phrasing and use of Maori slang may require some adjustment for American readers, but ultimately his staccato prose style is ideally suited to a world of not-so-quiet desperation. Regardless of one's position on the controversy, the half Pakeha /half Maori Duff provides a compelling and insightful glimpse into the overwhelming struggles faced by the disenfranchised poor of any urban society--including America's own inner cities.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out  of print or unavailable edition of this title.
 

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Parable of the Sower
by Octavia E. Butler

From Publishers Weekly
Hugo and Nebula Award-winner Butler's first novel since 1989's Imago offers an uncommonly sensitive rendering of a very common SF scenario: by 2025, global warming, pollution, racial and ethnic tensions and other ills have precipitated a worldwide decline. In the Los Angeles area, small beleaguered communities of the still-employed hide behind makeshift walls from hordes of desperate homeless scavengers and violent pyromaniac addicts known as "paints" who, with water and work growing scarcer, have become increasingly aggressive. Lauren Olamina, a young black woman, flees when the paints overrun her community, heading north with thousands of other refugees seeking a better life. Lauren suffers from 'hyperempathy," a genetic condition that causes her to experience the pain of others as viscerally as her own--a heavy liability in this future world of cruelty and hunger. But she dreams of a better world, and with her philosophy/religion, Earthseed, she hopes to found an enclave which will weather the tough times and which may one day help carry humans to the stars. Butler tells her story with unusual warmth, sensitivity, honesty and grace; though science fiction readers will recognize this future Earth, Lauren Olamina and her vision make this novel stand out like a tree amid saplings.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
 

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Surrounded on Three Sides (Florida Sand Dollar Books)
by JOHN KEASLER (Author)

Review
"Forsaking the frantic world of a New York public relations firm, Paul Higgins moves his family to the rustic, undeveloped Florida midlands. Peace and quiet are assured until a celebrated author moves into the neighborhood. Paul then sets in motion a public relations project geared to protect the community from Progress and an invasion of sightseers. The effort boomerangs with farcical results". -- Library Journal

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Teaching the Trees
Lessons from the Forest
by Joan Maloof (Author)

From Booklist
"Not so long ago," Maloof notes, "the largest trees lived in the forests, and the trees in parks and yards were modest by comparison; today, in many parts of the world, the tables have turned." Concerned that so few old-growth trees exist, Maloof offers a lovely collection of essays as spur and solace. A meditation on beech trees explores the trees' relationship to red-backed salamanders, the twayblade orchid, and flying squirrels. An essay on maples recalls the years of childhood, when whirly-gigs (maple seeds) rained down from the trees in Maloof's yard. Unexpected details grace the book. The sweet-gum tree, for instance, which doesn't flower until it is 20 years old, produces two types of flowers that bloom simultaneously, and its aromatic sap, prized by the Aztecs, was used as medicine as well as incense. A biologist by training, the author makes good use of poetry and history to demonstrate the connections between the trees and the rest of the planet's inhabitants. A gem. Rebecca Maksel
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Unbowed
A Memoir (Vintage)
by Wangari Maathai (Author)

From Booklist
*Starred Review* The mother of three, the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate, and the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, Wangari Maathai of Kenya understands how the good earth sustains life both as a biologist and as a Kikuyu woman who, like generations before her, grew nourishing food in the rich soil of Kenya's central highlands. In her engrossing and eye-opening memoir, a work of tremendous dignity and rigor, Maathai describes the paradise she knew as a child in the 1940s, when Kenya was a "lush, green, fertile" land of plenty, and the deforested nightmare it became. Discriminated against as a female university professor, Maathai has fought hard for women's rights. And it was women she turned to when she undertook her mission to restore Kenya's decimated forests, launching the Green Belt Movement and providing women with work planting trees. Maathai's ingenious, courageous, and tenacious activism led to arrests, beatings, and death threats, and yet she and her tree-planting followers remained unbowed. Currently Kenya's deputy minister for the environment and natural resources, Nobel laureate, visionary, and hero, Maathai has restored humankind's innate if nearly lost knowledge of the intrinsic connection between thriving, wisely managed ecosystems and health, justice, and peace. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Walden
By Henry David Thoreau

Henry Thoreau is considered, along with Edgar Allan Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman and Nathaniel Hawthorne, as one of the leading figures in early American literature, and Walden is without doubt his most influential book. It recounts the author's experiences living in a small house in the woods around Walden Pond near Concord in Massachusetts. Thoreau constructed the house himself, with the help of a few friends, and one of the reasons why he moved into it was in an attempt to see if he could live independently and away from society. The result is an intriguing work that blends natural history with philosophical insights and includes many illuminating quotations from other authors. Thoreau's wooden shack has won a place for itself in the collective American psyche, a remarkable achievement for a book with such modest and rustic beginnings

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