Cultivation and Catastrophe: The Lyric Ecology of Modern Black Literature

A transformative literary history of black environmental writing.

Winner, William Sanders Scarborough Prize by the Modern Language Association

At the intersection of social and environmental history there has emerged a rich body of Black literary response to natural and agricultural experiences, whether the legacy of enforced agricultural labor or the destruction and displacement brought about by a hurricane. In Cultivation and Catastrophe, Sonya Posmentier uncovers a vivid diasporic tradition of Black environmental writing that responds to the aftermath of plantation slavery, urbanization, and free and forced migrations. While humanist discourses of African American and postcolonial studies often sustain a line between nature and culture, this book instead emphasizes the relationship between them, offering an innovative environmental history of modern black literature.