‘A garden inclosed is my sister’: Ecofeminism and eco-valences

Abstract

Dead creek, for example, a creekbed that received discharges from the chemical and metal plants in previous years, is now a place where kids from East St. Louis ride their bikes. The creek, which smokes by day and glows on moonless nights, has gained some notoriety in recent years for instances of spontaneous combustion. The Illinois EPA believes that the combustion starts when children ride their bikes across the creekbed, ‘creating friction which begins the smoldering process’.

(Kozol, 1991: 17)

In 1986 a ruptured pipeline at the Purex Corporation's bleach plant in South Gate sent a green cloud of deadly chlorine over nearby Tweedy Elementary School. Seventy-one students and faculty were hospitalized and the school site was eventually abandoned. The next year, teachers in Bell Gardens discovered a possible ‘miscarriage cluster’ associated with toxic chromium emissions from adjacent plating plants, and eighteen months later Park Elementary in Cudahy was closed after analysis revealed that the ‘gook’ oozing from the playground for the previous quarter-century was highly carcinogenic residue from an old toxic landfill.

(Davis, 1992: 68)

Our cabin, which sits high on a knoll overlooking a narrow mountain valley, has a wide verandah around two sides. We often find ourselves sitting here, reflecting on our work, our lives, the state of the world. Sometimes we are simply sitting — listening to the sounds of birds, feeling the breath of warm winds, healing ourselves in the midst of the natural world.

(Plant, 1989: 1)