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Ecofeminist Literary Criticism: Theory, Interpretation, Pedagogy (Environment Human Condition)

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If you need a new way of reading more than you need a new book, buy Ecofeminist Literary Criticism. The mailman handed me my copy as I was leaving town for the Adirondack High Peaks. I took a field guide out of my backpack and slipped this treasure in instead. There would be no book like it on the "library" shelves at the Johns Brook Lodge. None of the ADKers (Adirondack Mountain Club members), none of the staff interns (ecology students from Cornell University), none of the eco-tourists (who shopped for nature writing at The Mountaineer) would have donated reading as revolutionary as this. This is a book of trailblazers.

In Ecofeminist Literary Criticism, Greta Gaard and Patrick D. Murphy feature essays by young academics who have examined recent literary works by Octavia Butler, Linda Hogan, Ana Castillo, Ursula LeQuin, Pat Mora, Sally Tisdale, Nora Naranjo-Morse (and many more). I knew that none of these women's works were on the lodge shelves next to well-worn nature writers. But, I also knew hikers gathering at the lodge would be hungry for the ideas these women (and their scholars) offer.

Dinner conversations revealed as much. The former forest technician now factory worker (union steward), no doubt had read little Chicana fiction, but our discussions of labor politics and environmental injustice were in tune with Kamala Platt's "Ecocritical Chicana Literature: Ana Castillo's 'Virtual Realism.'" His wife, school psychologist on her first backpacking trip, found a perfect guide in Greta Gaard's "Hiking without a Map: Reflections on Teaching Ecofeminist Literary Criticism." For the mother and daughter reading a Kingslover novel aloud, there is Karla Armbruster's "'Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight': A Call for Boundary-Crossing in Ecofeminist Literary Criticism" or Stacy Alaimo's "'Skin Dreaming': The Bodily Transgressions for Fielding Burke, Octavia Butler, and Linda Hogan" -- either essay would invite the women to reread the novel in hand as well as their lives on and off trail. For the cook studying primate cognition, I suggest Deborah Slicer's "Toward an Ecofeminist Standpoint Theory: Bodies as Grounds." Those eager to ask difficult questions about the interaction of human and non-human will devour this book, applying its lessons to other texts and contexts.

Hikers at Johns Brook Lodge, although often maligned as narrow-minded eco-tourists who see ecology as a Big Outside to be mapped and traversed, are ready for the scholars and activists featured in Ecofeminist Literary Criticism. This book, intended to transform English Studies in universities, needs to be read at bus stops and mountain huts. Plan on leaving a copy at the crossroads.

Lori J. Anderson

P.S. I am a poet, one of the women speaking in Patrick D. Murphy's essay, "'The Women are Speaking': Contemporary Literature as Theoretical Critique." As Gaard and Murphy assert, feminists tend to ignore the ecology in literary works. Critics often praise sexual politics or language experiments in my collection but downplay my ecological concerns. Patrick D. Murphy places my work in the context of contemporary ecofeminism: for that, I am indebted to him. He offers by far the best reading of my often misunderstood title, Cultivating Excess. He teaches me new ways of articulating my own goals. Ecofeminist Literary Criticism will be essential in forming my new work.

This collection of papers on ecofeminism follows the authors' intention to present a representative sampling of diverse approaches to discussing ecofeminism. Gaard is well regarded as a leading voice on the topic and her writing reflects the professionalism of analytic techniques applied to ecofeminist literature. A surprise in the collection was Cathleen and Colleen McGuire's description of the issues in coordinating a women's reading group on ecofeminist topics ("Grass-Roots Ecofeminism: Activating Utopia"), which they called EVE (Ecofeminist Visions Emerging). While this paper focuses on their efforts with a reading group, it does cover two works of ecofeminist utopian literature, Piercy's _Woman on the Edge of Time_ and Starhawk's _The Fifth Sacred Thing_. As part of this collection, I would have found it more satisfying to read greater depth in their thinking about these works. Their point (in part) was that one does not need to follow the orthodoxy of literary criticism to have something valid to contribute to the dialogue. Fair enough.