Disabled ecologies: lessons from a wounded desert

Abstract

"Deep below the ground in Tucson, Arizona, lies an aquifer forever altered by the detritus of Tucson's postwar boom. Once the ancient water body became polluted, so did the drinking water of the largely Mexican American community living above. Drawing on her own complex relationship to this long-ago injured landscape, Taylor takes us with her as she follows the site's disabled ecology-the networks of disability, both human and wild, that are created when ecosystems are corrupted and profoundly altered. What she finds is a story of entanglements that reach far beyond the Sonoran Desert. These stories often tell of debilitating and sometimes life-ending injuries, but they also map out alternative modes of connection, solidarity, and resistance-an environmentalism of the injured. An original and deeply personal reflection on what disability means in an era of increasing multispecies disablement, this book is a powerful call to reflect on the kinds of care, treatment, and assistance this age of disability requires"--