Description

Otis Books | Seismicity Editions, paperback

Publication Date: January 22, 2019

Publisher Marketing: Poetry. Literary Nonfiction. Environmental Studies. Noah Ross seeks to investigate a culture of media/news and its commodification of real-life tragedy, particularly as a vehicle for whiteness to maintain colonial control vis–vis the production of spectacle. According to its author, SWELL is “Writing itself out of recent hurricanes, this text juxtaposes coverage of Harvey in Texas with that of Irma/Maria in Puerto Rico and engages in a dialogue on the man-made nature of ‘natural’ disasters to wrestle with the epicenter of cultural storms like racism, colonialism, anthropocentrism, and tyranny. Composed of a mixture of news clips and interviews, statistics and updates, stories and conversations, SWELL attempts to subvert conventional narratives of disaster in the hopes of presenting blueprints for a more critical perspective on the language of hurricanes, climate change, and relief.