Understories: Plants and Culture in the American Tropics
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| Title: | Understories: Plants and Culture in the American Tropics |
|---|---|
| Description: | Understories: Plants and Culture in the American Tropics establishes the central importance of plants to the histories and cultures of the extended tropical region stretching from the U.S. South to Argentina. Through close examination of a number of significant plants – cacao, mate, agave, the hevea brasilensis, kudzu, the breadfruit, soy, and the ceiba pentandra, among others – this volume shows that vegetal life has played a fundamental role in shaping societies and in formulating cultural and environmental imaginaries in and beyond the region. Drawing on a wide range of cultural traditions and forms across literature, popular music, art, and film, the essays included in this volume transcend regional and linguistic boundaries to bring together multiple plant-centred histories or ‘understories'– narratives that until now have been marginalized or gone unnoticed. Attending not only to the significant influence of humans on plants, but also of plants on humans, this book offers new understandings of how colonization, globalization, and power were, and continue to be, imbricated with nature in the American tropics. |
| Authors: | Lesley Wylie |
| Resource Type: | eBook. |
| Subjects: | Caribbean literature--History and criticism, Central American literature--History and criticism, Plants in literature, American literature--History and criticism, Latin American literature--History and criticism |
| Categories: | ART / Subjects & Themes / Plants & Animals, LITERARY CRITICISM / American / Hispanic & Latino, LITERARY CRITICISM / Subjects & Themes / Nature |
| Database: | eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) |
| Abstract: | Understories: Plants and Culture in the American Tropics establishes the central importance of plants to the histories and cultures of the extended tropical region stretching from the U.S. South to Argentina. Through close examination of a number of significant plants – cacao, mate, agave, the hevea brasilensis, kudzu, the breadfruit, soy, and the ceiba pentandra, among others – this volume shows that vegetal life has played a fundamental role in shaping societies and in formulating cultural and environmental imaginaries in and beyond the region. Drawing on a wide range of cultural traditions and forms across literature, popular music, art, and film, the essays included in this volume transcend regional and linguistic boundaries to bring together multiple plant-centred histories or ‘understories'– narratives that until now have been marginalized or gone unnoticed. Attending not only to the significant influence of humans on plants, but also of plants on humans, this book offers new understandings of how colonization, globalization, and power were, and continue to be, imbricated with nature in the American tropics. |
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| ISBN: | 9781837644735 9781836245599 9781835535226 9781837645008 |
