ABOUT THIS BOOK

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.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

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.

REVIEWS

“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

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction
Caren Irr and Anik Chartrand, Decolonizing Environmental Futurisms
1. Africa
Cajetan Iheka, Introduction
Mame Bougouma Diene, Lekki Lekki
Ogaga Ifowodo, from The Oil Lamp
Tlotlo Tsamaase, Eclipse Our Sins
Tanure Ojaide, from Tales of the Harmattan
Henrietta Rose-Innes, Poison
2. East Asia
Shaobo Xie, Introduction
Jiang Zidan, Chocho
Han Shaogong, Plants in My Garden
Chen Yingsong, Tree Shouts
Baoerji Yuanye, from Salt on the Stars
Fu Fei, The Pond in the Field
3. Europe
Irina Sadovina, Introduction
Maarja Pärtna, from Vivarium
Niillas Holmberg, from Underfoot
Evgenia Nekrasova, Museum of Moscow Garbage
Anna Carlier, from Hertenleer
Aroa Moreno Durán, Gravity/La gravedad
Dogu Yücel, Under the Seas
Julien Gracq, from Lettrines II
4. Latin America
Roberto Forns-Broggi, Introduction
Abdón Ubidia, from Opinions of a Neanderthal. A Reported Essay
Edmundo Paz Soldán, Far Outside There Are Monsters
Ulises Gutiérrez Llantoy, The Trip of the Mortar
Fogwill, from Runa
Gabriela Damián Miravete, They Will Dream of a Garden
Camila Fadda Gacitúa, “Moving the Water”
5. North America
Kurt Cavender, Introduction
Robin Wall Kimmerer, In the Footsteps of Nanabozho: Becoming Indigenous to Place
Kimberly M. Blaeser, Growing Things
Jamaica Kincaid, What I have been Doing Lately
Leslie Marmon Silko, The Man to Send Rain Clouds
David Clerson, The Ape Within
6. South Asia
Upamanyu Mukherjee, Introduction
Mahasweta Devi, Pterodactyl II
Acknowledgements
Editor and Translator Biographies