Reimagining and Retelling Nature: The Tensions of Postcolonial Environment and Climate Change in Contemporary Latin American Literature

The entanglement of literature with the environment offers a keen perspective in
understanding hopes and fears surrounding climate change. This article examines the
possibilities of contemporary Latin American literature as a tool to explore how the (literary) reaction to the climate crisis is shaped by historic mediations and interpretations of the environment. Through the analysis of recent publications that offer retellings of seminal texts by rewriting them with a focus on the environment, this study argues that these novels allow nature as a concept to be reimagined through igniting a renewed urgency around the importance of environment and nature in national identity. By entering into the tensions in how Latin America defines itself, this article seeks to question why authors such as Verónica Gerber Bicecci (La compañía, 2017), Gabriela Cabezón Cámara (Las aventuras de la China Iron, 2019) and Ilan Stavans (Popol Vuh: A Retelling, 2020) reshape and recycle texts to discuss current social movements instead of investing in popular dystopian devices to imagine our uncertain future. With the use of theories of ecocriticism, Timothy Morton’s The Mesh and Rob Nixon’s Slow Violence, this work will create an innovative way to discuss the complex relationship of literature and the environment.