Fatal Contiguities: Metonymy and Environmental Justice

“Fatal Contiguities” considers the roles of metaphor and metonymy in novels that represent environmental injustices. Focusing on Helena María Viramontes’s depiction of East L.A. during the time of freeway construction in Their Dogs Came With Them , this essay suggests that metonymy, which works along the linguistic axis of contiguity, is especially effective in making visible the fatal contiguities between bodies and their surroundings characteristic of risk-laden places. The novel deploys and reshapes conventions of literary naturalism to show how characters’ lives are paradoxically determined by ubiquitous yet indeterminate forms of risk.