Sustaining Life under Extraction: Environmental Justice and Community Capabilities in Anindita S. Thayf’s Tanah Tabu and Korrie Layun Rampan’s Api Awan Asap

Extractive pressures threaten collective life despite economic gains. This study examines how environmental injustice reshapes substantive opportunities to sustain livelihoods and pursue valued collective futures. Environmental justice and community capabilities frame readings of Anindita S. Thayf’s Tanah Tabu [Taboo Land] and Korrie Layun Rampan’s Api Awan Asap [Fire, Clouds, and Smoke]. Comparative close reading and reflexive thematic development trace ecological access, differentiated opportunities, caring practices, and narrative form across contextualized episodes. Benefits and recognition coexist with gendered and generational constraints; care sustains practices without securing ecological and social conditions enabling their continuation. The study develops contingent continuance, linking narrative form to differentiated freedoms and insecure collective futures.