From the Mattole Valley to Lake Van: Foundational Texts for Restoration Ecocriticism

This article takes up restoration ecocriticism for the analysis of literary and cultural texts in the face of environmental degradation, which has reached critical levels today. Restoration ecocriticism that I put forward addresses the destruction and restoration of biotic communities and ecosystems worldwide, and in this article I focus on the foundational texts of restoration in the literary world. Within the ecological restoration movement, communities are speeding up grassroots greening activities, restoring threatened species, and engaging in large-scale restoration of landscapes for more fertile soils, food security, and human/nature health. While existing schools of ecocriticism have contributed greatly to environmental awareness over the years, this article highlights the need to study literary and cultural texts informed by landscapes and local environmental history towards active participatory environmentalism. Using this new ecocritical approach that I have theorised, the article examines texts that explore community-based restoration efforts in areas of human-induced environmental destruction. The article, in the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, suggests the ways in which environmental critics can contribute to the healing of landscapes and local species, and illustrates this with Freeman House's and Mustafa Sarı's restoration narratives that span a quarter century, Totem Salmon and Vazgeçme [Don’t Give Up].