Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9763-3087
Abstract
Literary representations of ocean currents are important in a time such as ours when the patterns of the global water cycles are changing. Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being and Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140 each, in different ways, imagine personal impacts of global water patterns. For Ozeki, the interconnections between oceanic and terrestrial processes manifest along the shores of the Pacific Northwest in the wake of the March 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami that hit Japan. For Robinson, the changes in ocean currents are clearly an effect of climate change, and we witness a kind of feedback loop wherein climate-induced changes in currents then hasten more climate change. Both Ozeki and Robinson offer fictional novels that are anchored in facts and show the enormously wide-ranging impacts of currents on human behaviors and of human behaviors on currents. For Ozeki, the currents carry stories and ripple with implications for how we see time; for Robinson, the slowing and shutting down of currents carry threats of inundation. For both, ocean currents define how we live in the world, and living comfortably will increasingly require changing our understanding of our global waters.
Recommended Citation
Estok, Simon C.
(2026)
"Blue Humanities Currents: Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being and Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140,"
Kritika Kultura:
No.
50, Article 5.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.13185/1656-152X.2277
Available at:
https://archium.ateneo.edu/kk/vol1/iss50/5
