Refiguring the Map of Sorrow

Choice

This balanced contribution to ecocriticism examines autobiographical works that focus on grief, the mourning process, and the interaction of the human world with the world of nature. Comprising close readings of Terry Tempest Williams's Refuge (1991), Bill Barich's Laughing in the Hills
(1980), Gretel Ehrlich's The Solace of Open Spaces (1985), Peter Mathiessen's The Snow Leopard (1978), Sue Hubbell's A Country Year (1986), and William Least Moon Heat's Blue Highways (1982), the volume offers critical insight into autobiography as Allister examines theoretical and artistic implications. Allister is interested in how these authors work through their grief, and he finds that they do so by extending themselves into the natural world and into the built environment. He applies an ecological term, ecotone, to the works he studies, defining them as border cases in which major perspectives of the human and natural worlds meet. In this regard, this work follows in the critical footsteps of centrally located ecocriticism as defined in The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology,
ed. by Cheryll Glotfelty and Harold Fromm (1996): the 'desire to articulate the intricate webs of relations in the natural world — one foot in literature and the other on land.' Highly recommended for upper-division undergraduates through faculty.