Desert Distortion

In working against static representations of the Desert Southwest that have persisted throughout popular culture, the book employs the term “desert distortion” as a productive way to use the desert’s agency in texts to unsettle old understandings and allow for experiencing the dynamic desert anew. Hence the title’s use of the word revealing: it is an argument that the desert is and has always been abundant. The book’s main aim is to read abundance in literature from and about the Southwest, applying desert distortion to perform multiple, coexisting understandings of desert places, and consequently of place more broadly. Through expansiveness of vision and curiosity of exploration, the desert then becomes a place of interconnection, proliferation, and imagination.