“Just as in the Book”? The Influence of Literature on Readers’ Awareness of Climate Injustice and Perception of Climate Migrants

Abstract

Increasingly, Americans and people around the world are alarmed about climate change (Goldberg et al.; Fagan and Huang), which is now widely recognized as an anthropogenic and catastrophic process that is already having pervasive negative consequences. Artists and cultural producers, including novelists, have mirrored the general trend of growing awareness and concern. Starting in the 1990s, authors began featuring climate change as a major element of their fictional worlds—first in science and speculative fiction and then, by the 2010s, in nearly every genre of literature (Johns-Putra). Many authors of climate fiction wrote with an activist bent, hoping to alert their audiences to the gravity of the threat and the need to take immediate action (Schneider-Mayerson, “Climate Change Fiction”). In turn, by the mid-2010s, identifying, analyzing, and discussing climate fiction became a common way for ecocritics and environmental humanists to apply their knowledge and abilities to the climate crisis. Climate change, they argued, is ultimately caused not by personal lifestyle choices or specific policies but by the worldviews, values, and priorities that are instilled and legitimized by dominant cultural narratives. Therefore, climate fiction can play a critical role in helping us recognize, understand, and feel the catastrophic trajectory on which we find ourselves and chart a different path forward (e.g., Ghosh; Ramuglia).

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