Abstract

HUERTAS ARREDONDO, Kimberly. Dialogues between Botany and Literature: The case of Green bestiary. Vegetable micro-stories (2023), by Rafael Ángel Herra. Káñina [online]. 2024, vol.48, n.2, pp.292-311. ISSN 2215-2636.  http://dx.doi.org/10.15517/rk.v48i2.61461.

This paper reviews the book Green bestiary. Vegetable micro-stories (2023), by Rafael Ángel Herra. First, a synthesis of some of the formal, discursive and thematic elements that make up the work is presented. Then, a brief analysis of some of the micro-stories in this collection is offered to point out the kind of convergence and dialogue with the critical turn of cultural studies about plants, as well as plant thought and intelligence. Finally, it is concluded that this book contributes to a renewed interest in (fictional) literature about plants and the «botanical turn», as a response to the need for new narratives that dare to propitiate dialectical spaces and challenge «plant blindness» (Wandersee and Schussler, 1999). This critical overview allows us to defend that this book is one of the most suggestive, shocking and moving forms of non-anthropocentric textualization that aims to revalue with freshness and ingenuity the non-human/vegetable thought and sensibility, as a projection of contemporary Latin American non-mimetic literature.

Keywords : Costa Rican literature; dialogues; Latin American literature; plant world; monsters.

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