American Indian Literature, Environmental Justice, and Ecocriticism: The Middle Place

(Planeta.com Journal) -- The author's experiences among the Tohono O'odham nation that crosses the Mexico-United States border serves as a critical backdrop to her in-depth examinations of literature, such as Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead and Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire. This is a powerful book that focuses attention on the linkages between literature and the envrionment. It's the first to review American Indian literature from the standpoint of environmental justice. By exposing the blind spots in our cultural vision, it does create opportunities for building common ground, or as the author terms, "the middle place" where environmentalists, scholars, writers and teachers can come together to work for social and environmental change.