Book chapter
Writing to Save Sun Bears: Speculating about Non-Human Characters within Biography
Speculative Biography: Experiments, Opportunities and Provocations, pp.113-130
Routledge Auto/Biography Studies, Routledge
2022
Abstract
This chapter is a post-project reflection which explores the challenges I faced in researching and crafting a non-fiction biography of Malaysian ecologist Dr Wong Siew Te in relation to the inclusion speculative life stories of sun bears in his care. It compares my use of anthropomorphic empathic speculation to imagine the experiences of individual bears with the fictional biographical speculation of non-human animals in two seminal works, Virginia Woolf’s biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Flush, and Barbara Gowdy’s The White Bone . It concludes that species-inclusive narratives are important, since if we fail to address the disconnect between humans and natural systems, unsustainable human behaviour has the capacity to lead to our own eventual demise.
Details
- Title
- Writing to Save Sun Bears: Speculating about Non-Human Characters within Biography
- Authors
- Paul Williams (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Indigenous and Transcultural Research Centre - LegacySarah Pye (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Business and Creative Industries
- Contributors
- Donna Lee Brien (Editor) - Central Queensland UniversityKiera Lindsey (Editor) - Griffith University
- Publication details
- Speculative Biography: Experiments, Opportunities and Provocations, pp.113-130
- Series
- Routledge Auto/Biography Studies
- Publisher
- Routledge
- DOI
- 10.4324/9781003054528-7; 10.4324/9781003054528
- ISBN
- 9781003054528
- Organisation Unit
- Indigenous and Transcultural Research Centre; Sustainability Research Centre; School of Business and Creative Industries; University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 99567208802621
- Output Type
- Book chapter
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