The arid American Southwest is host to numerous organisms described
as desert-loving, or xerophilous. Extending this term to include
the regions writers and the works that mirror their love of desert
places, Tom Lynch presents the first systematically ecocritical
study of its multicultural literature. By revaluing nature and by
shifting literary analysis from an anthropocentric focus to an
ecocentric one, ""Xerophilia"" demonstrates how a bioregional
orientation opens new ways of thinking about the relationship
between literature and place. Applying such diverse approaches as
environmental justice theory, phenomenology, border studies,
ethnography, entomology, conservation biology, environmental
history, and ecoaesthetics, Lynch demonstrates how a rooted
literature can be symbiotic with the world that enables and
sustains it. Analyzing works in a variety of genres by writers such
as Leslie Marmon Silko, Terry Tempest Williams, Edward Abbey, Ray
Gonzales, Charles Bowden, Susan Tweit, Gary Paul Nabhan, Pat Mora,
Ann Zwinger, and Janice Emily Bowers, this study reveals how
southwestern writers, in their powerful role as community
storytellers, contribute to a sustainable bioregional culture that
persuades inhabitants to live imaginatively, intellectually, and
morally in the arid bioregions of the American Southwest.
'[W]hether I notice or not, the landscape suffuses my body.
Intermingled scents enter my lungs with each breath: dust, rock,
juniper, turpentine bush, mountain mahogany, the heady mix of
volatile oils of the creosote bush, and the ever-so-subtle odor of
blue sky. Though less often articulated, all of my senses, not just
vision, are engaged; the phenomena of this world circulate through
me, and I through them. The landscape caresses as I pass
through...On my feet again, I hobble from stiffness, throw my pack
on, and, leaning on my sotol stalk for balance, begin to pick my
way zigzag down the long rocky slope. I am in love with this
landscape. I am, indeed, a devoted xerophile' - from the
introduction.
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