Description: An Island in the Stream, a collaboration between Cuban and American writers and scholars, is a diverse collection of ecocritical and literary responses to the natural environment in Cuba and to Cuban environmental culture.
Brief description: Scott Slovic is University Distinguished Professor of Environmental Humanities at the University of Idaho, USA, where has been teaching since 2012-previously he was a professor at Texas State University and the University of Nevada, Reno. He served as founding president of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) from 1992 to 1995, and since 1995 he has edited ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment for ASLE and Oxford University Press. He is the author, editor, or co-editor of twenty-seven books, including, most recently, The Routledge Handbook of Ecocriticism and Environmental Communication (with Swarnalatha Rangarajan and Vidya Sarveswaran). His forthcoming books include Nature in Literary Studies (coedited with Peter Remien) for Cambridge University Press's Critical Concepts Series. He coedits Routledge Studies in World Literatures and the Environment with Swarnalatha Rangarajan and Routledge Environmental Humanities with Joni Adamson and Yuki Masami.
Review Quotes:
"This hybrid collection of ecocritical and literary responses to the Cuban environment and to Cuban environmental culture offers a stimulating map of the ongoing process of mutual encouragement and support between academic and artistic communities located on the island and abroad. The variety of subjects and experiences--a complex network of literary and artistic traditions and ventures--shows a fruitful desire for connection beyond national borders, an authentic aspiration toward dialogue, which implies a polemic openness for American and Cuban participants alike. This book offers seeds of diverse, alternative environmentalisms in the context of dominant neoliberal fantasies: an invitation to overcome complicities with our respective systems and blind spots about our differences and resemblances. This is a powerful call not only for more innovative scholarly work, but also for expanding our quest for public debate over the meaning of the environment in our political and cultural lives." --Roberto Forns-Broggi, Metropolitan State University of Denver; author of Knots like Stars: The ABC of Ecological Imagination in our Americas
"This refreshing collection of complementary essays brings to the fore, through translation, the often-neglected voice of Cuban artists and ecocritics, together with that of American hispanists and ecocritics: one more example of the growing strength and breadth of environmental humanities in non-English speaking cultures." --Carmen Flys-Junquera, Instituto Franklin, Universidad de Alcalá, editor of Ecozon@ "An Island in the Stream gathers a rich array of texts in an anthology of critical essays, short stories, memoirs, travelogues, and poetry for an ecocritical examination of the scholarly and creative work of Cuban writers, artists, performers, and intellectuals. What is especially valuable about the collection is the way in which it functions as a corrective to the perception that Cuban texts have not been particularly concerned with the natural world. On the contrary, the book includes insightful ecocritical analyses of well-known literary figures such as Alejo Carpentier, Jose Martí, and Jose María Heredia, while it also provides some needed exposure to the nature writing of lesser-known authors such as Lydia Cabrera and Antonio José Ponte. And, An Island in the Stream delves farther afield into "Green" Cuban cultural production with the inclusion of selected poetry and discussions of theater, painting, sculpture, even the environmental significance of a hand-carved spinning top. All of these elements come together for a particularly illuminating glimpse of current ecocritical thought from leading scholars in the field along with novel examples from a variety of unique and uniquely ecological Cuban imaginative work." --Scott M. DeVries, Manchester University