{"schema_version":"bf_book_companion_v1","release_id":"20261010T034321Z-reviewed-full-unique-works","book":{"amazon_purchase_url":"https://www.amazon.com/dp/0816532001?tag=bookfrontie00-20","asin":"0816532001","authors":["Priscilla Solis Ybarra"],"book_id":"9780816532001","canonical_url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/writing-the-goodlife-9780816532001","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780816532001.jpg?v=ade9f15067fbb61f","description":"Winner of the Western Literature Association’s 2017 Thomas J. Lyon Book Award in Western American Literary and Cultural Studies Mexican American literature brings a much-needed approach to the increasingly urgent challenges of climate change and environmental injustice. Although current environmental studies work to develop new concepts, Writing the Goodlife looks to long-established traditions of thought that have existed in Mexican American literary history for the past century and a half. During that time period, Mexican American writing consistently shifts the focus from the environmentally destructive settler values of individualism, domination, and excess toward the more beneficial refrains of community, non-possessiveness, and humility. The decolonial approaches found in these writings provide rich examples of mutually respectful relations between humans and nature, an approach that Priscilla Solis Ybarra calls “goodlife” writing. Goodlife writing has existed for at least the past century, Ybarra contends, but Chicana/o literary history’s emphasis on justice and civil rights eclipsed this tradition and hidden it from the general public’s view. Likewise, in ecocriticism, the voices of people of color most often appear in deliberations about environmental justice. The quiet power of goodlife writing certainly challenges injustice, to be sure, but it also brings to light the decolonial environmentalism heretofore obscured in both Chicana/o literary history and environmental literary studies. Ybarra’s book takes on two of today’s most discussed topics—the worsening environmental crisis and the rising Latino population in the United States—and puts them in literary-historical context from the U.S.-Mexico War up to today’s controversial policies regarding climate change, immigration, and ethnic studies. This book uncovers 150 years’ worth of Mexican American and Chicana/o knowledge and practices that inspire hope in the face of some of today’s biggest challenges.","forthcoming":false,"isbn13":"9780816532001","publication_date":"20160324","publisher":"University of Arizona Press","slug":"writing-the-goodlife","subtitle":"Mexican American Literature and the Environment","title":"Writing the Goodlife"},"discovery":{"categories":{"all":[{"bisac_code":"LIT004050","confidence_band":"high","label":"Hispanic American Lit Crit","score":0.8044,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"LIT004100","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Caribbean & Latin American Criticism","score":0.7636,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"LIT025020","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Nature in Literature","score":0.7624,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"hint":[{"bisac_code":"LIT004050","confidence_band":"high","label":"Hispanic American Lit Crit","score":0.8044,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"LIT004100","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Caribbean & Latin American Criticism","score":0.7636,"source":"bisac_hint_model"},{"bisac_code":"LIT025020","confidence_band":"medium","label":"Nature in Literature","score":0.7624,"source":"bisac_hint_model"}],"publisher":[{"bisac_code":"LIT004050","confidence_band":"high","label":"Hispanic American Lit Crit","score":1,"source":"onix_publisher_code"}]},"genres":[{"label":"Hispanic American Lit Crit","score":0.8044,"slug":"hispanic-american-lit-crit"},{"label":"Caribbean & Latin American Criticism","score":0.7636,"slug":"caribbean-latin-american-criticism"},{"label":"Nature in Literature","score":0.7624,"slug":"nature-in-literature"}],"reader_fit":["Good for readers interested in Mexican American literature and environmental studies"],"related_lists":[],"series":null,"similar_books":[{"authors":["Imelda Martín-Junquera"],"book_id":"9781137293602","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9781137293602.jpg?v=6eceeb4494e9fb02","score":0.7551,"title":"Landscapes of Writing in Chicano Literature","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9781137293602"},{"authors":["Héctor Calderón"],"book_id":"9780292705821","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780292705821.jpg?v=7f0f12d9245fa932","score":0.7184,"title":"Narratives of Greater Mexico","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780292705821"},{"authors":["Ralph E. Rodriguez","Ralph Rodriguez"],"book_id":"9780823279241","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780823279241.jpg?v=df450a3bdd03b941","score":0.7044,"title":"Latinx Literature Unbound","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780823279241"},{"authors":["Harold Augenbraum","Margarite Fernández Olmos"],"book_id":"9780395765289","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780395765289.jpg?v=de3af0515b3d4823","score":0.703,"title":"The Latino Reader","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780395765289"},{"authors":["Elizabeth Jacobs","Elizabeth C. Jacobs"],"book_id":"9780415364904","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780415364904.jpg?v=40f158b9aa1072c5","score":0.7005,"title":"Mexican American Literature","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780415364904"},{"authors":["Margarita Longoria","Francisco X. Stork","Guadalupe Garcia McCall","David Bowles"],"book_id":"9780593204986","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780593204986.jpg?v=670dc7d4e9ea4cd9","score":0.6954,"title":"Living Beyond Borders","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780593204986"},{"authors":["Estelle Tarica"],"book_id":"9780816650057","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780816650057.jpg?v=40769e1a2b4bb4b5","score":0.6842,"title":"The Inner Life of Mestizo Nationalism","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780816650057"},{"authors":["Frederick Luis Aldama"],"book_id":"9780292709409","cover_image_url":"https://img.bookfrontier.com/9780292709409.jpg?v=87bf92da4288206e","score":0.6834,"title":"Brown on Brown","url":"https://bookfrontier.com/books/9780292709409"}],"topics":[{"evidence_refs":["keyword:mexican american literature"],"label":"Literature","score":0.057,"slug":"literature"},{"evidence_refs":["keyword:nature"],"label":"Nature","score":0.0486,"slug":"nature"},{"evidence_refs":["keyword:latino studies"],"label":"Studies","score":0.0285,"slug":"studies"},{"evidence_refs":["phrase_map_match"],"label":"Civil Rights","score":0.0074,"slug":"civil-rights"}],"what_you_get":["Themes: Environmental justice, Decolonial environmentalism, Community and human-nature relations.","Themes: Literature, Nature, Studies.","Reading lane: Hispanic American Lit Crit and Caribbean & Latin American Criticism."]},"llm_signals":{"confidence":0.95,"pacing":"unknown","reader_fit":["Readers interested in Mexican American literature and environmental studies"],"themes":["Environmental justice","Decolonial environmentalism","Community and human-nature relations"],"tropes":[]},"source_presence":{"amazon":true,"book_detail":true,"goodreads":true,"llm_signals":true,"similarity_seed":true},"stats":{"amazon_ratings_count":3,"goodreads_ratings_count":6,"goodreads_reviews_count":1,"quality_score":0.8265}}