In the American southwest, you don't have to look far to see the damage done to environment during the Anthropocene. This manifests itself in droughts, dams and heat that becomes more extreme with each passing year. Some contemporary writers have found unique ways to shed light on the environmental crisis, going beyond science to humanize the subject in their novels. So Far from God by Ana Castillo and Gardens in the Dunes by Leslie Marmon Silko focus on the lives of female characters, but both novels also talk a lot about the environment. The bodies of these women, through trauma, become the medium used by Castillo and Silko to show the violent nature of the environmental crisis. Both authors combine feminism and environmentalism and illustrate the importance each has for the other. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Both Silko and Castillo begin their novels by showing women and nature as interconnected, preparing the reader for other connections between the two later. Silko's Gardens in the Dunes opens by introducing a family of women belonging to the Sand Lizard tribe: Indigo, Sister Salt, their mother, and their grandmother. They live in a paradise among the sand dunes, teeming with amaranths, pumpkins and sunflowers that the grandmother teaches the girls to grow. She gives them gardening advice that has its roots in an ancient legend: “Don’t be greedy. The first ripe fruit of each harvest belongs to the spirits of our beloved ancestors, who come to us as rain; the second... to birds and wild animals (17). Indigo and Sister Salt receive an entirely female education in the gardens, the grandmother being an archetype of the wise old woman. Castillo also writes about female members of a family, in her case a Chicana family living in New Mexico. So Far from God also has its own wise old woman archetype. The character of Caridad receives healing lessons from a curandera, doña Felicia, who recommends chewing a sprig of sage to cure empacho, or using an egg to get rid of the evil eye (66-68). At one point, Felicia thinks aloud about the connection between women and nature, wondering why, in giving birth to eight children, she never cried as she saw men do on the battlefield for the Mexican Revolution, telling Caridad, “I think there’s something to that.” it has to do with the unnatural nature of murder compared to the naturalness of childbirth (55). Another female character notable for her connection to nature is La Loca, who herself is a somewhat wise old woman from the age of three. This is the age where she rises from the grave and claims to have returned from a Divine Comedy style journey through hell, purgatory, and heaven in order to return to pray for all the people in her town (24). Afterwards, she becomes a recluse, more inclined to befriend animals than others, and also having a natural desire to heal her sisters when they are unwell. The most disturbing part of what makes La Loca seem so connected to nature is her fear of humans. After her resurrection, she finds the smell of other humans unbearable, stating that they carry "an odor similar to that which she had smelled in the places she had passed through when she was dead (23)". This smell which is so repugnant to La Loca seems to suggest a sort of defilement, of permeation, which humans cause, alllike a bad smell. So Far from God continues by recounting the many horrors that this smell portends. Throughout the novel, the women of the family experience physically distressing things like miscarriage, rape, breast mutilation, and cancer. Their bodies are dominated by things beyond their control, just like the environment. Men in the novel are often portrayed as greedy and taking advantage of women. For example, Sofia's husband gambles everything she has and another woman, Doña Dolores, suffers "twelve years of suffering" from the marriage, eleven babies who did not survive, and to top it all off , the husband drank everything they had (20). Women are exhausted like resources to the point of exhaustion. In one of the most horrific scenes in the novel, Caridad is found abandoned on the side of the road and almost dies. The description of her body is then explicit: “[her] nipples had been torn off. She had also been flogged with something that looked like cattle. Worse still, a tracheotomy was performed because she had also been stabbed in the throat (33). The other townspeople assume that her mutilation was the work of men, and that certainly seems to be the case. Humans mark livestock, and the fact that their injuries are compared to those of an animal raised for food to such an extent that they are detrimental to our environment is significant. However, Castillo later writes that two people other than Caridad know the truth about what happened to her, through visions, and that these two people happen to be the two women most connected to nature in the novel: La Loca and Dona Felicia. After all, this was not a man who “attacked and left Caridad mutilated like a decayed rabbit” – again, his injuries are compared to those of an animal, a part of nature. It was “a thing both tangible and amorphous. A thing that could be described as made of sharp metal and splintered wood, of limestone and gold and brittle parchment...it was pure strength (77). This is one of the most mysterious parts of the book. Reading it at the beginning, one might wonder what Castillo's purpose is in including some sort of monster instead of a human rapist-murderer. Its description is, however, essential. Its industrial appearance, with its sharp metal and splinters of wood, and the fact that it is a dark cloud, could represent pollution. By transforming it into a destructive monster, Castillo shows not only the effects of pollution on the climate, but also on the people who live there. Rape and domination of women and the land are also present in Silko's novel. In Gardens in the Dunes, Silko writes about the westward expansion of the United States in the 19th century, a time when settlers discovered indigenous plants and people and left their mark on both. Indigo is kidnapped and sent to an “Indian school” where she is forced to assimilate into white American culture. As Silko writes of the other girls at school: “…only their skin looked Indian. Their eyes, their hair and, of course, their shoes, stockings and long dresses were no different from those of the [white] matron (69 years old). Indigenous girls have had their bodies transformed, so much so that even their eyes are different. This is happening at the same time that settlers are also transforming the land, with dams, railroads, etc. Greed is the catalyst for these transformations. What is important for the survival and culture of indigenous peoples is not important to them. In her essay “Seeking the Corn Mother,” Joni Adamson explains how Silko uses the story of these Sand Lizard girls to highlight the., 1999.