Xerophilia: Ecocritical Explorations in Southwestern Literature

The arid American Southwest is host to numerous organisms described as desert-loving, or xerophilous. Extending this term to include the region’s writers and the works that mirror their love of desert places, Tom Lynch presents the first systematically ecocritical study of its multicultural literature. By revaluing nature and by shifting literary analysis from an anthropocentric focus to an ecocentric one, Xerophilia demonstrates how a bioregional orientation opens new ways of thinking abou...