"Last Frontier. North to the Future." : Oil-Age Alaska and the Environmental Critique in Mei Mei Evans's Oil and Water

Titelangaben

Krstic, Marija:
"Last Frontier. North to the Future." : Oil-Age Alaska and the Environmental Critique in Mei Mei Evans's Oil and Water.
In: Journal of the Austrian Association for American Studies. Bd. 6 (2025) Heft 2 . - S. 132-150.
ISSN 2616-9533
DOI: https://doi.org/10.47060/jaaas.v6i2.222

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Abstract

This article discusses Mei Mei Evans's 2013 novel Oil and Water as a critical response to the competing narratives that have historically shaped three dominant versions of Alaska in the national imagination: as the Last Frontier to be explored, as an enduring frontier promising a balance between resource extraction and environmental protection, and as a wilderness to be preserved. Inspired by the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, which takes a pivotal place in US environmental history, the novel offers a realistic exploration of the environmental, social, and cultural consequences of oil dependency. By dramatizing the spill's devastating impact on both human and more-than-human life, Oil and Water challenges the images of Alaska as a limitless resource frontier and the enduring frontier, while advancing the notion of Alaska as a wilderness to be protected.