Postcolonial Ecologies: Literatures of the Environment ed. by Elizabeth DeLoughrey and George B. Handley (review)

Perhaps the greatest contribution Postcolonial Ecologies makes to the study of literature and the environment is to unequivocally dispel the myth that postcolonial writers have not been attentive to nature. In their introduction to this strong new collection of essays, Elizabeth DeLoughrey and George B. Handley go to great lengths to illustrate the disparate and nuanced environmental tradition within postcolonial literature and theory. They preface their introduction with two epigraphs—one from Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth and a second from Edward Said's Culture and Imperialism. The epigraphs are striking, not only for the succinct way they connect land and decolonization but also for their publication dates; published in 1961 and 1994, respectively, Fanon and Said's texts immediately gesture toward a long and thorough history of environmental concern and awareness within postcolonial thought. DeLoughrey and Handley document this important archival work throughout their introduction, pointing to additional postcolonial theorists who link environmental history and empire building, including Edouard Glissant and Wilson Harris. They also highlight an extensive environmental imagination within postcolonial narratives and poetry via discussions of the work of Guyanese poet Martin Carter, Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe, and Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, among others.

The vast catalogue of postcolonial environmental thought DeLoughrey and Handley unwrap allows them to persuasively argue that "the global south has contributed to an ecological imaginary and discourse of activism and sovereignty that is not derivative of the Euro-American environmentalism of the late 1960s and '70s" (8). This is an important addition to ecocritical studies, as much mainstream ecocritical work assumes that European and American ideas lie at the heart of the global environmental movement. DeLoughrey and Handley shed light on alternative environmental traditions that compare and contrast with European and American epistemologies in interesting ways and that broaden the historical, theoretical, and geographical scope of ecocritical thought. In this way, they show that postcolonial literatures and methodologies should not be relegated to the sidelines of ecocritical studies but should rather sit front and center as ecocritics engage in more globally nuanced studies of literary representations of the environment. They also demonstrate that environmental approaches offer an important way to rethink postcolonial literatures.

The body of Postcolonial Ecologies builds on this project and is organized into four sections: "Cultivating Place," "Forest Fictions," "The Lives of (Nonhuman) Animals," and "Militourism." Some of these sections make impressive contributions to established discussions within ecocritical discourse. "Cultivating Place" includes three essays that explore the ways in which postcolonial writers seek to establish an aesthetics of belonging that combats colonialism's complex history of displacement and exile. These essays are wide ranging, moving from Indian novelist Kiran Desai to St. Lucian poet Derek Walcott, and elaborate on and complicate ecocriticism's concern with place, rootedness, and gardens in valuable ways. Of particular note in this section is LeGrace Benson's study of Haitian visual arts. Benson's concern lies in the way visual mappings of place by Haitian artists merge African and New World ecologies in their use of the Garden of Eden trope as a response to Haiti's environmental and economic ruin. Her contribution shifts attention from the written to the visual and thus offers an important call to scholars of literature and the environment to expand the genres under purview. "Forest Fictions" moves from gardens to wilderness and expands ecocriticism's complication of supposedly "natural" or "pristine" landscapes. The essays in this section are similarly wide ranging, exploring the work of Puerto Rican poet, journalist, and activist Juan Antonio Corretjer, Cuban novelist and essayist Alejo Carpentier, and Bengali short story writer Mahasweta Devi, among others. Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert's essay, which traces representations of forests as a site of struggle in Caribbean literature written in English, French, and Spanish between the arrival of Walter Raleigh and the contemporary moment, is especially impressive. Paravisini-Gebert's essay has a similar scope as DeLoughrey and Handley's...