Ecocriticism: Creating Self and Place in Environmental and American Indian Literatures

Ecocriticism: Creating Self and Place in Environmental and American Indian Literatures studies twentieth-century poets and prose writers of diverse ethnicity who have attempted to recover a sense of home, identity, community, and place in response to various forms of displacement caused by such forces as colonization, racial and sexual oppression, and environmental alienation. Working from an ecocritical perspective that investigates «place» as inherent in configurations of the self and in the establishment of community and holistic well being, this book examines the centrality of landscape in writers who, either through mythic, psychic, or environmental channels, have identified a landscape or place as intrinsic to their own conceptualizations of self. It also clarifies the territory where postcolonial and American studies intersect by investigating the literary decolonization efforts made by American Indian authors who are writing to reclaim their historical territories.