Island in the Stream

Armando Fernandez Soriano is coordinator for ecological politics for La Fundación Antonio Núñez Jiménez de la Naturaleza y el Hombre in Cuba. Scott Slovic is professor of literature and environment and professor of natural resources and society at the University of Idaho and co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Ecocriticism and Environmental Communication (2019).David Taylor is assistant professor of environmental humanities in the Sustainability Studies Program, School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, Stony Brook University.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroductionScott Slovic and David Taylor“Dimensions of Nature and Ecofeminism in the narratives of Excilia Saldaña,” Mariana G. Serra Garcia“Renewing Niagara Falls, Burning the Archive in the Cuban Poetic Tradition,”Gabriel Horowitz“Men and Women of the Earth in the Texts of Marti’s Travels,” Mayra Beatriz Martinez“Antonio Nuñz Jiménez, Oswaldo Guayasamín, and the Recovery of Cuba’s Progressive Intellectuals,” Susan E. Bender“Lydia Cabrera and The Narrative of Nature,” Margarita Mateo Palmer“The New World Baroque as Postcolonial Ecology in Alejo Carpentier’s The Lost Steps.” This essay was originally published in Postcolonial Ecologies (Oxford UP 2011), George B. Handley“Cuban Theatre and the Dilemma of Nature,” Karina Pino Gallardo“Among the Ruins of Ecological Thought: Parasites, Trash, and Nuclear Imaginings in La fiesta vigilada,” Christina Maria GarciaAppendix: Literary Responses“Of the African in Cuba,” Heriberto Feraudy Espino“The Gardener’s Creed,” Alison Hawthorne Deming“Weight,” Sylvia Torti“The Cuba Poems,” Robert M. Pyle“Restauración,” Laura Ruiz Montes“Lessons from Cuba,” Blas Falconer“El Trompo: In the Sierra Mountains with Guerilla de Teatreros,” David Taylor“Something Wonderful and Surreal: American Ecocritics and Environmental Writers Contemplate Exile in Cuba as Donald Trump Eyes the White House,” Scott SlovicContributor’s Biographies

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.