Stacy Alaimo

“Dropping down dead, the birds, like Fe’s chemical, are heavier than air. Once Fe does comprehend her incomprehensible world, she realizes her own unintentional but harmful actions. She recollects how she had “more than once dumped [the chemical] down the drain at the end of the day,” which meant that it “went into the sewage system and worked its way to people’s septic tanks, vegetable gardens, kitchen taps and sun-made tea”. In this work of marvels, mysteries, and myths, it is the invisible yet substantial, mundane yet brutal flow between bodies and places that makes life in risk society a most difficult matter to comprehend. The dazzling magical realism that provokes readers to wonder what is “real” in this fictional universe parallels the confounding everyday experience of life in a world where risks are, “in a fundamental sense, both real and unreal”. The harm inflicted by the unseen chemical is already apparent in Fe’s body, even as its effects on the plants, animals, and people in her region may go undetected.”
― Stacy Alaimo, Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self