"Environmental Victims"

Paper Summary:

The anthologized book "Environmental Victims", as edited by noted scholar of environmental and social justice Christopher Williams, contains a poem by a child at its very onset, as a tribute to the diversity of accounts and authors it contains within its pages, as well as a way of grabbing the reader's attention. The paper explains how the book's stated aim is to present a series of voices and versions of environmental destruction, to create a persuasive and pervasive picture of the harms caused by modern industry to the reader. It points out that the book uses nontraditional scientific forms of expression, such as verse, to move the heart as well as the head of the reader to social action on a global as well as on a community-wide level.

From the Paper:

"The poem by the child of an environmentally damaged community, one of the many unjustly environmental communities catalogued over the course of the book is entitled "The Disgrace of Shell Oil." Its first words are, "Icky oil all over our feet/ Black waters/ our food has run away/Plants have gone bad..." (10). The poem, which has a raw persuasive power, is by a grade-school age child, one eight-year-old Mali McGee. A casual reviewer might be tempted to dismiss this as mere sentimentality, of course. Yet Mali's poem is truthful as well as the production of a mere child. It paints a literal picture of oil as well as has a figurative power. This is the oil so often discussed in the modern media that nations war over, causing environmental as well as social and politician tensions and destruction."

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