“Gardening in Eden”: Wasted Lives, or Detoxic Identities in Gail AndersonDargatz’s Turtle Valley and Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer

This paper analyzes the inflection of a border-crossing ecological concern on the regional cultures of settlement through Gail Anderson-Dargatz’s Turtle Valley (2007) and Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer (2000). Their engagement with the contingent position of the farmers in the British Columbia...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Carmona Rodríguez, Pedro Miguel
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2023
País:España
Institución:Universidad de La Laguna (ULL)
Repositorio:RIULL. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de La Laguna
OAI Identifier:oai:riull.ull.es:915/32171
Acceso en línea:http://riull.ull.es/xmlui/handle/915/32171
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Ecocriticism
Gail Anderson-Dargatz
Turtle Valley
Barbara Kingsolver
Prodigal Summer
Descripción
Sumario:This paper analyzes the inflection of a border-crossing ecological concern on the regional cultures of settlement through Gail Anderson-Dargatz’s Turtle Valley (2007) and Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer (2000). Their engagement with the contingent position of the farmers in the British Columbia Shuswap region, and the southern Appalachian Zebulon County resituates the self. The struggle for production is substituted by a revisionist at- titude that relocates (wo)men and nature in a sustainable coexistence that approaches the human species and others. The ecological awareness of these novels uses a postindustrial landscape where human bodies and lives exhibit the malaise inflicted on the environment; they increasingly become waste(d) and toxic, and their habitat becomes a threat, also ma- terialized in (post)natural catastrophes impelling the relocation of human communities, or business reinvention. The human wastification of Eden is instrumental to launch a revision that detoxifies identity thanks to a remodeled bond with nature.