abstract: Alice Walker's The Third Life of Grange Copeland articulates an early southern ecofeminist and environmental justice critique by mapping the racialized and gendered geographies of the US South. Reading Walker through ecofeminist and environmental justice frameworks demonstrates how ecological spaces—cotton fields, woods, gardens, and farms—actively shape African American experiences of oppression and survival. Walker juxtaposes exploitative landscapes structured by racial capitalism with redemptive spaces cultivated through African American women's care-centered relationships to land. By tracing three generations of the novel's Copeland family, Walker imagines environmental justice as intergenerational healing rooted in Black women's resilience.
Catherine Bowlin (Thu,) studied this question.