Body of Woman, Body of Water: Examining Intersections of Feminism and Environmentalism in So Far From God and Gardens in the Dunes Emily Price College

In the Southwestern United States, one doesn’t have to look far to find the damage done to the environment during the Anthropocene. It is apparent in droughts, dams, and heat that gets more extreme by the year. Some contemporary writers have found unique ways to shed light on the environmental crisis, going beyond science to humanize the subject in novels. Ana Castillo’s So Far from God and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Gardens in the Dunes center around the lives of female characters, but both novels are also very much about the environment. The bodies of these women, through experiencing trauma, become the medium Castillo and Silko use to show the violent nature of the environmental crisis. Both authors weave feminism and environmentalism together and illustrate the importance each has to the other.

Both Silko and Castillo begin their novels by showing women and nature as interconnected, setting up the reader for further connections between the two later on. Silko’s Gardens in the Dunes opens by introducing a family of women belonging to the Sand Lizard tribe: Indigo, Sister Salt, their mother and grandmother. They live in a paradise among the sand dunes, teeming with the amaranth, pumpkins, and sunflowers that the grandmother...