Empire and Environment: Ecological Ruin in the Transpacific

Empire and Environment argues that histories of imperialism, colonialism, militarism, and global capitalism are integral to understanding environmental violence in the transpacific region. The collection draws its rationale from the imbrication of imperialism and global environmental crisis, but its inspiration from the ecological work of activists, artists, and intellectuals across the transpacific region. Taking a postcolonial, ecocritical approach to confronting ecological ruin in an age of ecological crises and environmental catastrophes on a global scale, the collection demonstrates how Asian North American, Asian diasporic, and Indigenous Pacific Island cultural expressions critique a de-historicized sense of place, attachment, and belonging. In addition to its thirteen chapters from scholars who span the Pacific, each part of this volume begins with a poem by Craig Santos Perez. The volume also features a foreword by Macarena Gómez-Barris and an afterword by Priscilla Wald.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Preface: Out of the Ruins Macarena Gómez-Barris Introduction Rina Garcia Chua, Heidi Hong, Jeffrey Santa Ana, Zhou Xiaojing PART I: (Framing) Postcolonial Ecocritical Approaches to the Asia-Pacific from Family Trees (poem) Craig Santos Perez 1 Transpacific Queer Ecologies: Confronting Ecological Ruination and Imperialist Nostalgia in Han Ong’s The Disinherited Jeffrey Santa Ana 2 Cycas wadei and Enduring White Space Kathleen Gutierrez 3 Rust and Recovery: A Study of South Indian Goddess Films Chitra Sankaran 4 “If We Return We Will Learn:” Empire, Poetry, and Biocultural Knowledge in Papua New Guinea John Charles Ryan PART II: Militarized Environments Nuclear Family (poem) Craig Santos Perez 5 Environmental Violence and the Vietnam War in le thi diem thuy’s The Gangster We Are All Looking For Emily Cheng 6 Toxic Waters: Vietnamese Ecologies in the Afterlives of Empire Heidi Amin-Hong 7 Haunted by Empires: Micronesian Eco-Poetry Against Colonial Ruination Zhou Xiaojing PART III: Decolonizing the Transpacific: Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Resistance Praise Song for Oceania (poem) Craig Santos Perez 8 Risk and Resistance at Po\\ōhakuloa Rebecca Hogue 9 “Disentrancing” the Rot of Colonialism in Philippine and Canadian Ecopoetry Rina Garcia Chua 10 Representing Postcolonial Water Environments in Contemporary Taiwanese Literature Tihan Chang PART IV: Climate Justice and Ecological Futurities Age of Plastic (poem), Craig Santos Perez 11 Climate Justice in the Transpacific Novel Amy Lee 12 Rising Like Waves: Drowning Settler Colonial Rhetoric with Aloha Emalani Case 13 Imperial Debris, Vibrant Matter: Plastic in the Hands of Asian American and Kanaka Maoli Artists Chad Shomura Afterword: “A New Way Beyond the Darkness” Priscilla Wald Contributors Index