Sharing the Earth ─ An International Environmental Justice Reader

The first of its kind, this anthology of eighty international primary literary texts—poems, short stories, personal essays, testimonials, activist statements, and group-authored visions—illuminates Environmental Justice as a concept and a movement worldwide in a way that is accessible to students, scholars, and general readers. Also included are historical selections that ground contemporary pieces in a continuum of activist concern for the earth and human justice, a much-needed but seldom available perspective.

Arts and humanities are crucial in the ongoing effort to achieve an ecologically sustainable and just world. Works of the human imagination provide analyses, articulations of experience, and positive visions of the future that no amount of statistics, data, charts, or graphs can offer because literature speaks not only to the intellect but also to our emotions. Creative literary work, which records human experience both past and present, has the power to warn, to persuade, and to inspire. Each is critical in the shared struggle for Environmental Justice.

Individual contributors to Sharing the Earth: Abdul-Rashid Na'Allah, Adrienne Rich, Agostinho Neto, Ah Cheng, Alex Smith, Arundhati Roy, Audre Lorde, Charles W. Chesnutt, Cheryl Savageau, Evelyn C. White, Fred D'Aguiar, George Ripley, Handsome Lake, Henry David Thoreau, Hone Tuwhare, Ishimure Michiko, Jamaica Kincaid, James H. Cone, Jane Addams, Janice Mirikitani, Jayanta Mahapatra, Jayne Cortez, Jeffrey Myers, Julia Lisella, Karl Marx, Ken Saro Wiwa, Lao Tzu, Linda Hogan, Lord Ashley, Manik Bandyopadhyay, Maria Cristina Mena, Marilou Awiakta, Marilou Awiakta, Mark Nowak, Martin Espada, Michael Albert, Miguel Angel Asturias, Mike Davis, Mo Yan, Mulk Raj Anand, Namwali Serpell, Nikky Finney, P. Sainath, Quan Barry, Rabindranath Tagore, Rigoberta Menchu, Rita Wong, Roger Sedarat, Sadako Kurihara, Simon Ortiz, Sol T. Plaatje, Steve Chimombo, Sui Sin Far, Tanya Shirley, Vandana Shiva, Wangari Maathai, Wangari Maathai, Witi Ihimaera, Zakes Mda.

Also included are contributions from these organizations, cultures, and groups: Diggers and Levelers, Lowell Women Workers, People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, Scottish Workers, Lakota (indigenous North Americans), Xhosa (indigenous Africans), United Nations, EJ Class Collective-2013.

Elizabeth Ammons is Harriet H. Fay Professor of Literature at Tufts University, where she teaches courses on Environmental Justice and U.S. literature and American Indian writers. She is the author or editor of numerous titles, including Brave New Words: How Literature Will Save the Planet. Modhumita Roy is an associate professor of English at Tufts University, where she teaches courses on non-Western women writers and postcolonial theory and fiction. She is the author of many essays on empire, culture, and social justice issues.