Latinx Environmentalisms: Place, Justice, and the Decolonial

The whiteness of mainstream environmentalism often fails to account for the richness and variety of Latinx environmental thought. Building on insights of environmental justice scholarship as well as critical race and ethnic studies, the editors and contributors to Latinx Environmentalisms map the ways Latinx cultural texts integrate environmental concerns with questions of social and political justice.

Original interviews with creative writers, including Cherríe Moraga, Helena María Viramontes, and Héctor Tobar, as well as new essays by noted scholars of Latinx literature and culture, show how Latinx authors and cultural producers express environmental concerns in their work. These chapters, which focus on film, visual art, and literature—and engage in fields such as disability studies, animal studies, and queer studies—emphasize the role of racial capitalism in shaping human relationships to the more-than-human world and reveal a vibrant tradition of Latinx decolonial environmentalism.

Latinx Environmentalisms accounts for the ways Latinx cultures are environmental, but often do not assume the mantle of “environmentalism.”

Sarah D. Wald is an Associate Professor of Environmental Studies and English at University of Oregon and author of The Nature of California: Race, Citizenship, and Farming since the Dust Bowl.   David J. Vázquez is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Oregon and author of Triangulations: Narrative Strategies for Navigating Latino Identity.  Priscilla Solis Ybarra is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of North Texas and author of Writing the Goodlife: Mexican American Literature and the Environment.  Sarah Jaquette Ray is an Associate Professor and Program Leader of Environmental Studies at Humboldt State University and author of The Ecological Other: Environmental Exclusion in American Culture.