Argument: Recently there has been an interest in environmental martyrdom. Thanks in partto the assassination of Manuel Esteban Paez Terán in Atlanta, Georgia by police, the idea that more environmentalists could be killed while protesting in the name of environmental justice in the U.S. is becoming a common thought. What the killing of an environmental activist in such a large city in America mean in the grand scheme of things is an important question to ask. While the assassination of environmental activists is less visible in more developed countries, it is very common in less developed ones. One such book where an environmental activist is killed in the streets and is made a martyr is Karen Tei Yamashita’s Through the Arc of the Rain Forest. Unlike what happened in Atlanta, the book is focused on a fictional location in Brazil. Due to the book being fictional, it can combine several different story arcs and ideas such as magical feathers, an omnipresent gift-giving ball, multi-appendaged profiteers, and a network of message-carrying pigeons. All of these are shown to be interconnected in some way or another even if the characters attached to them do not realize it. However, due to this interconnectedness of all things presented in the book and the understanding that the Matacão exists in a perpetual cycle of dying and coming back to life over and over again through time, the death of Chico Paco seems less significant. Therefore, I argue that Through the Arc of the Rain Forest suggests that environmental martyrdom is shown to be less significant in a world that is both interconnected and existing within a never-ending perpetual cycle.

Presentation: Michele Bowman Underwood Department of Modern Languages and Literatures 2024 Graduate Student Conference. Miami, FL.