Reviews for Reading the Earth: New Directions in the Study of Literature and Environment

The average rating for Reading the Earth: New Directions in the Study of Literature and Environment based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-07-23 00:00:00 Logan Ross This is a formal review I wrote for Amerasia Journal: The World Next Door: South Asian American Literature and the Idea of America is the first academic publication devoted entirely to literary criticism of South Asian diasporic literature of authors in the United States and Canada. Rajini Srikanth, Associate Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and editor of numerous South Asian American anthologies, engages with over twenty poets, writers, and playrights, choosing texts that allow her to reject and blur the commonplace binaries of materialism/spiritualism, liberation/oppression, insider/outsider, and modernism/tradition. In five thematic chapters, Srikanth discusses well known writers such as Jhumpa Lahiri, Chitra Divakaruni, and Pico Iyer, as well as lesser known authors Shani Mootoo, Indran Amrithanayagam, and Ginu Kamani as part of the socioliterary landscape of America. Srikanth asks both South Asian and non-South Asian readers alike to consider "What is South Asian American writing and what insights can it offer us about living in the world at this particular moment of tense geopolitics and interlinked economies?" (1) Srikanth positions these authors in the complex webs of relationships between the United States, South Asia, and other nations, using the events of September 11, 2001 and the "war on terror" as a fulcrum point. She urges readers that a nuanced understanding of these political and economic relationships can lead us to a deeper engagement with South Asian American writing. In her lengthy introduction, Srikanth explores the role of writers at an urgent historical moment where images and representations of South Asian Americans have become increasingly critical. Literature, Srikanth argues, may serve as a mode to learn and engage with the world. She cautions, however, that a worldview that privileges the discursive without equal attention to material realities is ultimately limited. Srikanth suggests that writers may serve as the conscience of a people and recorders of both individual and universal trauma, thereby inviting readers to reflect on and recognize the trauma of others. Her assertion of the author's role is not overly optimistic, however, as her analysis transcends multiculturalism's apolitical celebration of difference. The introduction and chapter two, entitled "Transnational Homepages: Safety in Multiple Addresses" perhaps most directly address Srikanth's initial question. In the second chapter, Srikanth asserts that South Asian American literature complicates our ideas of space, citizenship, and allegiance and highlights the ways in which nations have been linked for the past several hundred years. Much of South Asian American literature cannot be easily categorized as South Asian American as these narratives transcend North America and South Asia to include other geographies. For example, in the novel The Glass Palace, Amitav Ghosh connects the histories of Burma, Malaysia, and India by dramatizing the lives of Tamil plantation workers in Malaysia. South Asian writers, artists, and activists have successfully demonstrated an ability to legitimately occupy multiple spaces, situating their narratives beyond the nation-state without neglecting the oppression of people of color within U.S. borders. The work of Meena Alexander, fiction writer and poet, exemplifies this link of the external with the internal, evoking the "…globalism of outrage, of moral indignation, of social justice, of compassion for those others like us who are also a part of this world" (88). In Chapter Three, "Desire, Gender, and Sexuality," Srikanth examines stories that challenge conventional contexts of heteronormative relationships and family dynamics, and move beyond stereotypical representations of repressed women, domineering men, female feticide, and loveless marriages. As an Indo-Trinidadian also writing about her home country, Shani Mootoo is an author whose life and fiction transcend the categories of sexuality, nationality, and ethnicity. In a story about a young girl who lives her life as a boy, Mootoo engages the marginalized identities of homosexual desire and transgender and transsexual subjects. The fiction and plays in this chapter make critical interventions in the predominant definitions of South Asian American sexual identities by resisting simple tropes and painting a portrait of complex negotiations and sophisticated desires. Although Srikanth encourages writers to cross borders and break boundaries through acts of " literary hutzpah with humility," she discourages artistic crossings that disregard power (170). Chapter Four, "Writing What You're Not: Limits and Possibilities of the Insider Imperative," one of the most insightful chapters of the book, is a direct interrogation into issues of representation. Srikanth reserves no special treatment for South Asian writers, arguing that they may also be guilty of portraying South Asian characters in a reductive or Orientalist fashion. She addresses the limitations of an ethnocentric perspective in both creative work and political activism. Srikanth believes that the imaginative rendering of stories beyond the South Asian experience will create a productive tension that "liberates our imaginations to envision bold possibilities of living and participating in the civic spaces in which we make our homes" (196). Srikanth's primary contribution is her ability to push readers to think critically about cultural workers of color in America. She insists that we understand the contexts of their work, and the dialectical relationship between artists and the economic, political, and social forces acting upon them. Drawing upon the work of theorist Kwame Anthony Appiah, she urges readers and society at large to cultivate a cosmopolitan consciousness, one that respects difference and appreciates interconnectedness. Srikanth's insights and analysis are a welcome addition to Asian American Studies literature and contemporary issues courses, and serves well as a companion read to South Asian American literature. Due to the vast landscape of work Srikanth surveys, the reader must read each critique through the lens of her original question, which can perhaps be paraphrased as - what can a sustained examination of South Asian American literature teach us about citizenship, gender, representation, and the multiple South Asian experiences of America? In her final chapter, "Trust and Betrayal in the Idea of America," Srikanth arrives at no simple conclusions, if only that the "idea of America" is heterogeneous, contested, and one that hovers "in the space between adoration and condemnation, appreciation and rejection" (202).

Review # 2 was written on 2013-12-16 00:00:00 Thomas Rusciano Great stuf in the introduction. I need to get my hands on this sooner rather than later...