One day we were in a dream world, where Julia was dead and the space where she once was became large and silent, and then we were in another country altogether — where stories and voices made their way into our house any way they could. They heaved under the floorboards, whispered in the windows. Creaked in the attic like a python grown too big on rats. And I collected them all to fill that silence Julia left.
After the accidental death of Ruth's five-year-old sister, their father decides that atonement and healing are in order, and that taking on aid work in a mountain village in Irian Jaya is the way to find it. It is the late 1990s, a time of civil unrest and suppression in the Indonesian province now known as West Papua.
The family drops into what seems the middle of nowhere, where they experience a vibrant landscape, an ever-changing and disorientating world, and — for Ruth — new voices. While her parents find it a struggle to save themselves, let alone anyone else, Ruth seeks redemption in bearing witness to and passing on the stories of those who have been silenced — even as she is haunted by questions about what it means to witness and who gets to survive.
Published by Vintage NZ (PRHNZ), 2017.
Reviews & More forThe Earth Cries Out:
"Wanita Selandia Baru Serukan Pembebasan Papua Lewat Novel." Wim Geissler, Qureta, 2 May 2018.
Reviewed by Patricia Prime. takahē, April 2018.
"Reading the Longlist." Reviewed by Robb Kidd. Otago Daily Times, 5 March 2018.
Reviewed by Lisa Hill. ANZ LitLovers LitBlog, 4 Jan. 2018.
"Announcing the longlist for the 2018 Ockham New Zealand book awards." The Spinoff, 28 Nov 2017.
"A Small Girl Fighting For Space." Reviewed by Elizabeth Heritage. Landfall, 1 Oct. 2017.
Reviewed by Louise O'Brien. New Zealand Books Pukapuka Aotearoa, 10 Sept. 2017.
Reviewed by Alyson Baker. 30 July 2017.
"Powerful, unadulterated insight into West Papua." Review by Kendall Hutt, Pacific Journalism Review, 21 July 2017.
"Evocative Work Imbued With a Sense of Place." Reviewed by Jessie Neilson, Otago Daily Times, 1 May 2017.
Reviewed by Paula Morris. Listener, 27 April 2017.
Reviewed by Jane Arthur. The Reader, 20 April 2017.
"Rare Glimpse of West Papua in New Novel." Jennifer Little, Massey News, 29 March 2017.
"First Novel Tells it Gracefully Like it Is." Dionne Christian, NZ Herald, 25 March 2017.
"Politics Anchors Human Story." Reviewed by Siobhan Harvey. Sunday Star Times, 12 March 2017.
Co-edited with Brianne Cohen and Erin Espelie (Amherst College Press, 2023)
The specifics of ecological destruction often take a cruel turn, affecting those who can least resist its impacts and who are least responsible for it. Deep Horizons: A Multisensory Archive of Ecological Affects and Prospects gathers contributions from multiple disciplines to investigate intersectional questions of how the changing planet affects specific peoples, communities, wildlife species, and ecosystems in varying and inequitable ways. A multisensory, artistic-archival supplement to the University of Colorado Boulder’s 2020-2022 Mellon Sawyer Environmental Futures Project, the volume enriches current conversations by bridging the environmental humanities and affect theory with insights from Native and Indigenous philosophies. It highlights artistic practices that make legible the long-term durational effects of ecological catastrophe, inviting readers and viewers to consider the emotional resonance of poems, nonfiction texts, sound-texts, photographs, and other artworks that grapple with the less visible loss and prospects of environmental transformation.
This multimodal, multisensorial volume pushes the boundaries of scholarship with an experimental, born-digital format that offers a set of responses to collective traumas such as climate change, environmental destruction, and settler colonialism. The artists and authors honor the specificity of real historical and material injustices while also reflecting the eclectic nature of assorted feelings in response to them, working through them in creative and border-crossing ways.
With contributions from Robert Bailey, Nina Elder, Erin Espelie, Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds, Maya Livio, Erika Osborne, Craig Santos Perez, Kim Tallbear, Julianne Warren, and Kyle Powys White.
This publication is open access via this link.
