Xerophilia: Ecocritical Explorations in Southwestern Literature Book

In the arid places of the American Southwest grow organisms described as desert-loving, or xerophilous. Extending this metaphor to the writers and writings of the region, Tom Lynch presents the first systematically ecocritical study of its multicultural literature.By revaluing nature and by shifting literary analysis from an anthropocentric focus to an ecocentric one, Xerophilia demonstrates how a bioregional orientation opens new ways of thinking about the relationship between literature and place. Applying such diverse approaches as environmental justice theory, phenomenology, border studies, ethnography, entomology, conservation biology, environmental history, and ecoaesthetics, Lynch demonstrates how literature is embedded within and symbiotic with the encompassing more-than-human world that enables and sustains it. Analyzing works in a variety of genres by writers such as Leslie Marmon Silko, Terry Tempest Williams, Edward Abbey, Ray Gonzales, Charles Bowden, Susan Tweit, Gary Paul Nabhan, Ann Zwinger, and Janice Emily Bowers, this study reveals how southwestern writers, in their powerful role as community storytellers, contribute to the evolution of a sustainable bioregional culture that enables inhabitants to live imaginatively, intellectually, and morally in the arid bioregions of the American Southwest.Read More