Abstract
Over the last two decades, Indigenous and postcolonial novels portraying magical creatures that symbolize a close relationship with nature and the environment have gained popularity. Bodies of water and their inhabitants such as mermaid figures, water monsters, anthropomorphic octopodes, and other animals, often a remnant of mythology, are prominently featured in such contemporary speculative fiction. This paper comparatively analyzes journeys through time and space, during which the element water acts as a medium of transgressing the boundary between worlds and harboring creatures that enrich or endanger the protagonists’ travels. Furthermore, it encompasses culturally diverse literary landscapes with texts from the following three regions: North America, West Africa, and the Pacific Ocean. This cross-regional comparative approach highlights the global context of anthropogenic climate change, while it also gives insight into different literary traditions and how they can overlap through the thematic analysis of journeys in, through, and with water. The analysis focuses on the portrayal of these aquatic spaces and what function they fulfill, on the more-than-human entities that live within them, and the cultural importance of these magical and mythological figures for the three regions. Exemplary texts that will be discussed are the climate fantasy Weird Fishes (2022) by Portuguese-Hawaiian author Rae Mariz, the Indigenous futurist novel A Snake Falls to Earth (2021) by Lipan Apache author Darcie Little Badger, and the YA Trilogy The Nsibidi Scripts (2011-2023) by American-Nigerian author Nnedi Okorafor.
Presenters
Eva Andrea KrannichStudent, Master of Arts, PhD Candidate, University of Augsburg, Bayern, Germany
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Aquatic Spaces, Indigenous Studies, Mythology, Climate Change, Cross-Regionality, Water Figures
