Summary: | "This project focuses on environmental practices among Mexican-American women and offers a rethinking of ecofeminism from the standpoint of Chicana feminists. Christina Holmes examines ecological themes across film, literature, murals and other visual art, Chicano nationalist activism, and contemporary direct action organization and presents how Chicana artists, activists, and scholars craft alternative models for ecofeminist praxis. Drawing on debates central to earlier ecofeminist work, Holmes analyzes issues around embodiment, women's connections to nature, and the place of spirituality in ecofeminist philosophy and practice. Chicana environmentalism provides pathways to insights in decolonization by linking social and ecological justice outside of a narrow framework, and Holmes seeks to explore the challenges to debates in the canon of ecofeminist literature to develop a more inclusive model of environmental feminism to alleviate some of the biases in Western feminism. Close readings of theoretical work; careful elaborations of ecological narratives in Chicana cultural productions; histories of land, water, and work rights struggles in the Southwest; and a detailed description of an activist exemplar of Chicana eco-feminist practices all work in tandem to underscore the importance of living with feminist commitment in body, nature, and spirit. Chicana Environmentalisms demonstrates how Chicana feminists have actively and materially stretched themselves into coalitions with human, nature, and spirit others, and these acts underscore the role of agency in Chicana ecofeminist work"--
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