Unnatural Disasters Research Articles

Identify Affecting Factors on Total Fertility Rate: A Systematic Review

Background: The total fertility rate (TFR) is a key indicator of population dynamics and health. It shows the average number of children a woman would have in her lifetime, based on the current fertility rates for different age groups. Various factors affect the TFR, such as social, economic, political, technological, environmental, and health factors. By analyzing these factors and how they influence the TFR, policymakers and planners can design and implement interventions to achieve optimal population and health outcomes. Methods: We searched PubMed, Scopus, ISI Web of Science, and ProQuest databases, as well as the Google Scholar search engine systematically. We searched for studies from 13 December 2021 - 20 May 2022, without time limits. We included studies that described at least one driver of TFR. We applied the STEEPH framework (social, technology, environmental, economic, political, and health) method to analyze the qualitative data. Results: We included 64 studies from 26 countries. We identified 410 drivers of TFR, and classified 181 drivers into six main categories: Social, technological, environmental, economic, political, and health. The main factors that lower the fertility rate are education, aging, poverty, postponing marriage (social), exposure of women to mass media (technology), type of residence and living in urban areas, road accidents (environmental), income and economic situation (recession and inflation), unemployment, debt, women’s employment (economic), government policies (political), use of anti-fertility drugs (health). The main drivers that raise the fertility rate are having first child girls, women’s proximity to their workplace (social), use of assisted reproductive technology (technology), living in rural areas and natural and unnatural disasters (environmental), improvement in men’s labor market conditions, employment opportunities (economic), increased parental leave (political), high infant mortality (health). Conclusions: We identified a comprehensive list of effective drivers that have increased or decreased TFR in different parts of the world. It is necessary to review these drivers considering the specific conditions and social, cultural, economic, and political coordinates of each country. This review should inform policymakers' actions in this area.

Evaluation of Disaster Perception Levels of University Students: A Sample Application Study

Disasters are important events that are difficult to predict and occur in various ways, often with high destructive power. Earthquakes, floods, droughts, major industrial accidents, famine, technological accidents, epidemics, etc. are only a few of the major types of disas-ters that mankind has been exposed to from past to present. In recent years, natural and unnatural disaster events have been observed both in Turkey (Düzce-earthquake, 1999; Giresun-Dereli-flood-flood, 2020; Kahramanmaraş-Pazarcık-earthquake, 2023) and in many other parts of the world (Sumatra-tsunami, 2004; Ecuador-earthquake, 2016; USA-hurricane-storm, 2023). The impact of disasters is often not limited to one region but can spread over a wide area. As a matter of fact, the impact of this destruction can be reduced at some point thanks to various measures that can be taken before the disaster. For exam-ple, identification of regional risks, early warning systems, crisis management, emergency action plans, etc. can be considered within the scope of these measures. Another important issue is to increase the level of disaster awareness of the society. Especially in regions where disaster risk maps have been prepared, such awareness raising activities can be carried out to make the reaction of the society against disasters more controlled and conscious. The aforementioned issues constitute the main objective of this study. This study was conducted to evaluate the disaster awareness levels of Gümüşhane Univer-sity central campus students. The data obtained in the study were analyzed using SPPS 25 statistical program. In the study, a 5-point Likert scale was used to measure disaster risk perception. In the study, frequency analysis test, Kruskal Wallis test and Mann Whitney U test were performed. As a result of the analysis, it was analyzed at 5% level of significance (p<0.05) and it is stated in the tables as arithmetic mean, standard deviation and percent-age of the number of individuals. Accordingly, as a result of the non-parametric Mann Whitney-U test, no significant difference was found between the groups. As a result of the non-parametric Mann Whitney-U test conducted to determine whether the disaster risk perception sub-dimension scores of the students differed significantly according to the gender variable, a statistically significant difference was found between the groups at the p<0.05 level in favor of the group exposed to disaster.

Roles of Schools and Educators in Supporting Resilience in Young Children after Disasters

The increasing frequency and severity of natural and human-induced disasters have had detrimental effects on global populations, resulting in heightened human suffering and disruptions to social structures. This paper explores the multifaceted impact of disasters, encompassing both natural hazards and unnatural disasters, on children and the role of schools and educators in mitigating these effects. While the immediate concern during crises is children’s safety, there are ways to protect and support resilience in young children.
 Schools hold significant importance as centres for education, socialization, and economic development, and their role in disaster response and recovery is crucial. Schools provide a sense of normalcy and continuity for communities affected by disasters. However, many schools lack the necessary preparedness, and physical structure in some cases, to effectively respond to these events, and educators often find themselves as first responders without adequate training.
 The paper underscores the need for comprehensive disaster skills training for educators and school staff, ensuring they are equipped to address children’s psychological, emotional, and educational needs before, during and after disasters. Additionally, schools can serve as a ‘place attachment’ for children which aids in disaster preparedness, processing traumatic experiences, and fostering resilience and recovery.
 This Bridging the Gap paper highlights the urgent need for proactive measures in education including disaster-focused training, robust disaster management plans, and the integration of resilience-building strategies. By prioritizing children’s well-being and leveraging the pivotal role of schools and educators, communities can enhance their capacity to cope with, respond to, and recover from disasters, ultimately promoting greater overall resilience.

Indigenous perspectives on climate mobility justice and displacement-mobility-immobility continuum

ABSTRACT For millennia, Indigenous Peoples around the world have prepared for, coped with, and survived disasters and environmental change, and human-induced events. Along the way, these experiences – and a keen understanding of the environment in which they live – have borne what we refer to today as Indigenous Knowledges. Among the most significant of the human-induced events, colonization has disrupted Indigenous strategies of self-determination and resilience. Indigenous-led climate change adaptation holds a transformative potential for addressing the impacts of the unnatural disasters of colonialism, land dispossession, and the climate change crisis. Yet, community-led research in this urgent research area remains limited. To ensure that Indigenous Peoples’ right to self-determination is protected and the horrific legacy of government-forced relocations is not repeated, communities must lead and define research on climate-forced displacement and planned relocation.

Analysis of Overmacht Credit Agreements During Pandemic (Case Study of Loss Claims Rejections By Judges)

<span>The purpose of this research is to identify and analyze Covid-19 as a form of comparative advantage and the consequences of the advantage method in loan agreements and loan termination policies due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The research method is norm-law. It is a legal research method that examines and studies the provisions of legislation as a basis for subsequent analysis of the issues discussed. The research uses primary and secondary legal material for analysis through the study of relevant documents and literature. The analysis is a qualitative analysis that addresses the question in question. According to the research, Covid-19 is an unnatural disaster and thus can be classified as a measure of superiority. As a priority relationship, the laws governing the spread of Covid-19 result in a priority relationship with the loan agreement, which means that the debtor must continue to meet his obligations to the debtor even after Covid-19 is over. When it was implemented following POJK 11/2020, the debtor obtained credit relief through restructuring in the form of interest rate cuts, extension of maturity, reduction of funds owed, and interest reduction in arrears according to the restructuring table issued by the bank. After verification and analysis by the bank, the affected debtor Covid- 19</span>

The Unnatural Disaster of Insurance, Underinsurance, and Natural Disasters

The Unnatural Disaster of Insurance, Underinsurance, and Natural Disasters

Editors' Preface

Editors' Preface Diane C. Fujino and Lisa Sun-Hee Park This special issue of the Journal of Asian American Studies presents a wide range of scholars raising critical questions about the work of Asian American studies. The guest editors, Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, Lily Anne Y. Welty Tamai, and Paul Spickard, invited scholars to wrestle with the inter/discipline of the field at the fortieth anniversary of the founding of the Association for Asian American Studies in 1979. Several of the essays began as presentations at the 2018 AAAS, and all had drafts completed before the pandemic. COVID-19 disrupted this special issue, as it did all our personal, professional, and collective lives. Many authors revised their essays in 2021, revisiting their ideas through the lens of the urgencies of the global health pandemic as well as the intensified focus on anti-Asian racism and antiblack state violence. The seventeen scholars in this special issue interrogate—from different disciplines, methods, and perspectives—the work of Asian American studies, not as a static field, but as one responsive to scholarly theorizing and to interventions and changes in the material and discursive society in which we are embedded. The essays vary widely. But taken as a whole, this issue makes explicit and implicit inquiries about the kinds of questions that frame Asian American studies and what this then obscures. They wonder whether the original goals of the field—with its focus on, as the guest editors note, "communities, partnerships with activism, solidarity with other communities of color, and defense against racism and gender and class oppression"—ought to be the primary mechanisms animating the field, or in what ways these ideas have shifted and towards what new formations. This is not to suggest that there is a disavowal of the original goals of the field. In fact, many authors suggest that the ideas and critiques and activist struggles that established the field either remain or, having shifted away, are now being revisited. While some might assume that Asian American studies [End Page v] is "designed for the advancement of Asian-raced people," it is, as Kandice Chuh states, "a way of bringing to bear the critique of power as the energizing force of the field." Her essay invites us to re-evaluate the meanings of what we think we understand about the field and its interrogations of power. Several of the essays work to critique and expand the field, and, perhaps seemingly paradoxically, some "newer" ideas actually reactivate ideas permeating the field's founding. Yê´n Lê Espiritu, in her article in this issue, looks at the ways critical refugee studies demands the global study of race, imperialism, and war, beyond the domestic landscape of what some consider Asian American studies. Lisa Yoneyama invites the field to consider how transpacific critique, as well as Native Pacific Islander studies and Southeast Asian studies, shapes Asian American studies. Josephine Nock-Hee Park, borrowing from Roderick Ferguson, asks what it means when we replace redistribution power with representational frameworks. She uses her own experiences at the university to critique narratives of success and to explore what is gained and what is lost through institutionalization. Naoko Shibusawa similarly uses compelling examples from her own experiences in various campus struggles to offer reflections on solidarity. She delves into the tensions swirling today among people centering antiblackness and Afro-pessimism to the exclusion of other kinds of racisms. Her musing on the specific and nuanced ways in which anti-Asian racism manifests (as a "sucker-punch" in her formulation) reminds us of Mitsuye Yamada's widely circulated essay, "Invisibility is an Unnatural Disaster." Jean-Paul R. Contreras deGuzman, and Douglass Ishii in a separate essay, share candid reflections on the life of contingent labor in the university and what is being asked of a field that claims to center critiques of power and work for transformative justice. We are proud to have redesigned the journal's cover to feature artwork, and view the cover's visual image as evocation of the themes in this issue. The artist, Cece Carpio, identifies as an Asian American, Filipina Indigenous immigrant who specializes in creating public art locally, nationally, and internationally. Her...

The De-Gentrification of New Markets Tax Credits

"I am concerned and I am frustrated because I don't know what the alternates are...It clearly isn't racist; its economics. The real question you have to ask yourself is: Is this good orbad?"-Norman Rice, former Mayor of Seattle, On gentrification in that cityUrban America is in a state of crisis. A huge pool of America's resources is increasingly disconnected from mainstream society. That pool is within the core of major cities and particularly includes African American and Hispanic male youth. By way of illustration, more than half of all core city African American men do not finish high school. The correlation between drop-out rates, unemployment, and incarceration is profound. As of 2004, 72% of African American dropouts who are in their 20's are unemployed, up from 65% in 2000.s Incarceration levels are at historic highs and increasing, where by their mid-30's, 6 in 10 of these high school drop outs have spent time in prison. That rate is four times higher than that of Black men in South Africa under the apartheid regime. Seventy-five percent of African American males incarcerated in Baltimore Maryland did not graduate from high school. The infant mortality rate among all African Americans is more than twice the national average, and is much worse among the poor in the core of urban America. After the Katrina floodwatershave receded, some see an opportunity to buy low and sell high. But themuted voices of the poor cry to keep what they had.' For them it was aKatrina moment. For the urban core poor across the nation, it has been aKatrina erosion over the decades from a series of unnatural disasters.

Disability, Human Rights, and Climate Justice

The universally dire threat of climate change disproportionately affects marginalized populations, including the over one billion persons with disabilities worldwide. States that disregard the Paris Agreement, or exclude disabled persons from climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts, are violating agreed-upon human rights obligations. Notably, the rights contained in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, are threatened by climate change. To date, however, disability has largely been excluded from international climate change negotiations as well as national-level discharge of climate-related measures. By contrast, a disability human rights approach views disabled persons as disproportionately experiencing environmental threats and unnatural disasters due to their exclusion from state laws, policies, and services available to their non-disabled peers. Additionally, a disability human rights approach mandates the removal of exclusionary barriers and the implementation of positive measures to ensure the equitable treatment of individuals with disabilities. Achieving disability-inclusive climate justice requires “participatory justice”—empowering persons with disabilities to ascertain climate mitigation and adaptation approaches that are efficacious for, successfully implementable by, and accountable to disabled people. Disability-inclusive climate justice solutions are in synergy with universal climate justice goals and benefit entire societies, not “only” those with disabilities.

Humanitarian relief chain agility: identification and evaluation of enabling factors

PurposeThis research paper aims to identify and evaluate the enabling factors of agility capability in humanitarian relief chain network.Design/methodology/approachThe research phases were implemented based on an integrated framework. First, a reference framework of the enablers has been constructed based on a literature review. Then, a hybrid evaluation approach is applied that combines fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) and analytic network process (ANP) to achieve reliable results. It provides a road map to identify and evaluate the interactions between the enabling factors and determines the weights correspond to their relative importance. This approach takes advantage of fuzzy set theory to deal with ambiguities, uncertainties and vagueness inherent in the evaluation process.FindingsRelief chain agility is a vital determinant of the effectiveness to succeed humanitarian missions during and after natural and unnatural disasters such as earthquakes, epidemics and terrorist attacks. Results shed light on the essential enabling factors, relationships among them, and their importance for developing humanitarian relief chain agility enhancing the overall performance quality.Originality/valueThe integrated framework is implemented for the Red Crescent, a nongovernmental organization in Iran, which is trying to optimize the agility of their humanitarian relief chain network. In short, the findings are beneficial for identification and utilization of the essential prerequisites of agility in order to develop an agile humanitarian relief chain.

Thinking Beyond Coloniality: Toward Radical Caribbean Futures

This essay reviews Aaron Kamugisha’s reading of the works of C. L. R. James and Sylvia Wynter in his 2019 book Beyond Coloniality: Citizenship and Freedom in the Caribbean Intellectual Tradition. Kamugisha issues a resounding call to reenergize the radical Caribbean intellectual tradition, saving us from our own alienation, colonization, and ambivalence. This essay takes inspiration from Beyond Coloniality to respond to the climate-political-social-cultural crisis in the Caribbean and to think through the possibilities for futurity in relation to reparative justice and ecological repair. It considers how the multiple devastations of recent “unnatural disasters” in the Caribbean are the outcome of the coloniality of climate, the deadly logics of racial capitalism, and the persistence of antiblack racism globally. The coloniality of climate calls for attention to repair, care, and reparations. We need to ask, Who is responsible, who is harmed, and who should be accountable?

Analysis of COVID-19 Tax incentives on tax revenues

The Covid-19 pandemic is a global problem that affects every aspect of almost all countries, especially the economic aspects. The Indonesian government states that the Covid-19 pandemic is an unnatural disaster that affects economic stability as well as state revenue, which is exacerbated by the existence of an incentive scheme.This study aims to analyze the provision of tax incentives by the government to respond to the economic impact caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as the impact on tax revenue on the tax incentive scheme or policy undertaken. This research is a descriptive study with a qualitative approach, which describes an event that becomes a phenomenon, then explains the situation based on the data obtained and analyzed.From several of the incentives and tax policies undertaken, more emphasis is placed on the regulatory function than on the budgetary. This step was taken to face the difficult economic conditions due to Covid-19. Losses in the form of loss of tax revenue due to the consequences of tax incentives can be calculated through the Tax Expenditure analysis, to measure the effectiveness of the tax incentives provided. © 2021 Karadeniz Technical University. All rights reserved.

Las historias que dejó María: Educators and Researchers Bearing Witness to the Coloniality of Displacement

This article centers the experiences of two university researchers in Colorado and four public school educators from Florida as they engaged in a dialogic process of counter-storytelling to reject one-dimensional narratives and embrace contradictions and vulnerabilities throughout the process. The authors speak against the deficit stories and colonizing practices that have affected Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans pre- and post-Hurricane María. This collaborative project humanizes the ongoing experiences of multiple displacements resulting from U.S. colonialism, racism, white supremacy ideologies, and unnatural disasters. Using a series of letters as the basis for reflection, we trace three major themes across our collaborative sense-making: (1) a desire to resist systems of white supremacy and coloniality by positioning teachers, displaced students, and their families as agents rather than victims; (2) a sense of (un)belonging that transcends or exists beyond the storm’s landfall; and (3) the power of counter-storytelling as a humanizing, liberating act.

Revelation

When this theme of ‘revelation’ was first being conceived of in September of 2019, Greta Thunberg was addressing the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York, decrying the state of climate change. “I shouldn’t be up here”, she said. “I should be back in school … people are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing.” The warming trend proceeding at an unprecedented rate as a result of human activity. When this theme was being fleshed out and abstracts being fielded in January 2020, Australia was aflame. Bushfires devoured more than 12.6 million hectares of land. “It has been unprecedented, and hopefully it’s one that none of us here will ever have to experience again”, said Ben Shepherd from the New South Wales Rural Fire Service.As articles were being edited, this editorial being honed, the world is in the grip of a pandemic. “Unprecedented times”, the world is saying, “the kids should be in school, people are dying.” But ecosystems are improving with greenhouse emissions slowed as lockdowns are in place, the pace of industry momentarily relaxed. Unprecedented times. With unprecedented times inevitably come moments of revelation. This issue of ‘revelation’ became an instance of our own, a revelatory reckoning that this theme was timelier than we could have ever anticipated. Instances of revelation can be seen, heard, and experienced through a variety of lenses, be they personal or political, historical or speculative, social or cultural, ecological or technological. Anders Lidén (313-16) describes revelation as “moments that contain the seeds of new creations” and which in turn are “suited to provoking or awakening sensations of surprise and revelation.” Platforms that cultivate shared experiences of revelation are becoming increasingly varied, evidenced through the breadth of topical responses to the theme within this issue. The feature article from Renzo Filinich and Tamara Jesus Chibey is a heady engagement with the revelation process of individuation, the revealing intersection between natural and artificial systems. In ‘A Biometric Logic of Revelation: Zach Blas’s SANCTUM (2018)’, from authors C.L. Quinan and Hannah Pezzack, biometric scanning technologies are examined as constructed within normative perceptions of race and gender. Wes Hill’s article presents a critical reflection on the socio-political impacts of specific revelatory and revealing art works of Hans Haacke. A similar critical reflection on socio-political impacts through revelatory and revealing art comes from authors Bronwyn Fredericks and Abraham Bradfield in their article ‘Revealing and Revelling in the Floods on Country: Memory Poles within Toonooba’. Here the authors look at flood markers turned public art by Capricornia Arts Mob; revelation is found in ‘revelling’ in Country and the ‘revealing’ of Aboriginal survival and resistance. Sites of revelation exist also in the complex visual and narrative repetitions found in literature and film. We see this respectively in an exploration of gendered violence during moments of intimacy in Emma McNicol’s article on John le Carré’s The Night Manager, and whistleblowing as an act of revelation in Sasa Miletic’s article ‘“Everyone Has Secrets”: Revealing the Whistleblower in the Hollywood Film’. Gabi Mocatta and Erin Hawley’s article ‘Uncovering a Climate Catastrophe? Media Coverage of Australia’s Black Summer Bushfires and the Revelatory Extent of the Climate Blame Frame’ looks at the role of the media in prompting climate change revelations within public consciousness in the wake of 2020’s devastating bushfires in Australia. Finally, a call for a revised model of cross-cultural training designed to facilitate vital discussions on racism in Australia from an Indigenous perspective – revelations gained from looking back at past shortcomings – in Bronwyn Fredericks and Debbie Bargaille’s ‘Situating Race in Cultural Competency Training: A Site of Self-Revelation’. We are certainly in unprecedented times, and critical expression to spark enlightenment, a way through, is never more needed as now in the age of Covid-19. On this, Mary Mostafanezhad (641) writes:The current revelatory moment of the COVID-19 pandemic offers an opportunity to find hope in the rubble through the deconstruction of framings of crisis as “error” … This reframing of the pandemic as an "unnatural" disaster opens new debates … of hope in revelatory moments of crisis. (639)The contributions made to this issue are as diverse in their responses to the theme of ‘revelation’ as they are insightful, though all are connected by their investment in meaningful conversations, of togetherness, betterment, critical engagement and necessary change during a period of global unease. We hope this issue helps you find hope in the rubble. ReferencesMostafanezhad, Mary. “Covid-19 Is an Unnatural Disaster: Hope in Revelatory Moments of Crisis.” Tourism Geographies. Werner, Joel, and Suzannah Lyons. “The Size of Australia's Bushfire Crisis Captured in Five Big Numbers.” ABC News, 5 Mar. 2020. “Transcript: Greta Thunberg's Speech at the U.N. Climate Action Summit.” NPR, 23 Sep. 2019. <https://www.npr.org/2019/09/23/763452863/transcript-greta-thunbergs-speech-at-the-u-n-climate-action-summit>.

Reconstructing tourism in the Caribbean: connecting pandemic recovery, climate resilience and sustainable tourism through mobility justice

Caribbean islands that are highly dependent on tourism are facing compounding crises from climate-related disasters to the Covid-19 pandemic travel disruption. The rebuilding of tourism infrastructure has often been one of the main aims of international development aid and regional government responses to natural disasters. This article seeks to identify other ways in which Caribbean small island states and non-independent territories might rebuild more sustainable ecologies and economies as they come out of the pandemic within the ongoing climate crisis. The first part shows the historical grounding of climate change vulnerability in colonial histories, neoliberal capitalism and ongoing practices of “extractive” tourism. This analysis of the “coloniality of climate” centers on a critique of disaster tourism during these “unnatural disasters,” and allows for re-framing the ethical and political implications of tourism recovery when other human im/mobilities (such as migration) are severely curtailed. The article then elaborates on the theoretical concept of “mobility justice” as a way to think through the problem of sustainability transitions in relation to tourism mobilities, climate change and disaster recovery. The final section considers alternative visions for disaster reconstruction in the Caribbean centering food sovereignty, agroecology and regenerative economies, as promoted by community-based organizations and people’s assemblies.

In Katrina's Wake: Portraits of Loss from an Unnatural Disaster

In Katrina's Wake: Portraits of Loss from an Unnatural Disaster

Risk Management of Drinking Water Supply in Critical Conditions Using Fuzzy PROMETHEE V Technique

Water crisis management in drinking water supply systems is a crucial issue. Many different natural and unnatural disasters cause great damages to these systems. Prioritizing effective strategies by expert decision-makers before any incidence can greatly reduce this damage. Moreover, cost minimization in the provision of these strategies is very essential as the urban crisis management organizations are financially limited. Therefore, this study provided a model for the selection of the most appropriate drinking water supply strategies in crisis conditions, considering possible limitations. Fuzzy PROMTHEE V, a multi-criteria decision-making method, is a new approach developed in this research to help the decision-makers in selecting a set of possible alternatives for drinking water supply management, which are ranked based on five criteria determined by decision-makers (water supply reliability, implementation speed and simplicity, implementation cost, social satisfaction, water quality) and budget limitation as the constraint for the optimization problem. This model was applied in a case study of Tehran city in Iran. Due to the uncertainties in expert opinions and parameters needed for drinking water supply risk management, this model was solved with three fuzzy methods and one non-fuzzy method, and the results were compared. Findings showed that strengthening passive defense in water supply, transportation, and distribution systems; providing water consumption management; encouraging people to save water for emergency conditions and planning to exploit popular forces and performing maneuvers are top-ranked alternatives.

Unnatural Disasters: Two Calculus Projects for Instructors Teaching Mathematics for Social Justice

We provide context and motivation for an instructor to use real-life examples in the calculus classroom. To this end we describe two specific project ideas, one related to the devastating impact of methylmercury fungicide in a grain seed supply and the other to a catastrophic methane leak. By using calculus in contexts that have social justice implications, we hope to empower students to reason for themselves, to use mathematics as a powerful tool to deepen their understanding of the world, and ultimately, to effectively confront the challenges society faces.

Unsettling the taken (for granted)

Histories of colonial plunder produced geographies that settler societies take for granted as settled. While some aspects of the conqueror/settler imaginary have been unsettled in specific cases, and through the negotiation of new instruments such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, various national apologies and modern treaties, much unsettling remains to be done. New geographies of plunder, violence and abuse reinstate geographies of various kleptocracies across the planet, reinforcing the unnatural disasters of displacement, disfigurement and loss on many people, places and communities. This paper uses the framing offered by emergent discourses of Indigenous geographies to reconsider the task of unsettling the taken-for-granted privilege of settler dominance in Indigenous domains.

Tryna Get Right with God

Tryna Get Right with God Chioma Urama (bio) She crawls around in others' emotions all day, trying them on and sobbing. She sits in a room with the radio going, ships sinking, unnatural disasters, form over content—speak it. They say, "the black body," and she can smell the burnt basement bulb swinging on its cord, a black girl in a blue dress lying in a pile of rust-colored leaves, George Washington's wide-toothed Igbo grin. At 8:15 pm she will write, The conditions for peace are already present. She can remember sharing a desk in grade school with a white boy who spoke incessantly, like he might explode if he didn't. She can remember stabbing him in the face with the point of her pencil. She would never do anything like that now. Someone's bending back the finger on the hand of a very small child who refuses to cry. False flowers, she will say to her son when he calls, you ever heard of anything more offensive? She believes that the mushroom that bloomed at the base of her pot of devil's ivy is a miracle. At 7:30 am she will write, DO NOT COVET. [End Page 59] There is a notebook full of torn recipes from soup can labels and advice from talk shows: free yourself through validation. Yes, I can hear you screaming hips. She will tune in to the sounds of her neighbors relaxing into their Saturday. She holds the blunt end of a knife toward the yolk of an avocado. Light pours into the room like a slowly forming idea. Today, she exists in the most sensible corner of a dream. She can't remember who she's wearing. [End Page 60] Chioma Urama Chioma Urama's work has been published in Pleiades, Blackbird, Paper Darts, and the Normal School and is forthcoming in the Southern Humanities Review. She received the Fresh Shaw Fiction Prize and an honorable mention in the Lindenwood Review Lyric Essay Contest. Urama is a Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship alumna and a graduate of the University of Miami mfa program where she was a Michener Fellow. She teaches creative writing and composition at the University of New Orleans. Copyright © 2019 University of Nebraska Press