Description:
Decolonial Topophilia examines the work of four major Puerto Rican poets--Luis Lloréns Torres, Luis Palés Matos, Juan Antonio Corretjer, and Julia de Burgos--whose works address the impact of colonial domination on the island's environment and its inhabitants (human and non-human) during the first half of the twentieth century.
Review Quotes:
"In this consistently insightful, well-researched, and well-written study of four major Puerto Rican poets of the early twentieth century, Víctor Figueroa convincingly demonstrates in his words, 'how a single island's history and ultimate destiny is inextricably entangled with global histories and planetary hopes for liberation--a liberation that must . . . [include] the well-being of both human beings and their other-than-human places and companions.' Such a study of Puerto Rico is long overdue for the insights the island's literature can offer to the environmental humanities. Decolonial Topophilia is smart, clear, and important scholarship that advances our understanding of the complexities and risks of what it means to love a place even as it rightly insists on its indispensability for the future."
--George B. Handley "coeditor of Postcolonial Ecologies: Literatures of the Environment"