“Why have so many Latine writers and activists come to describe themselves as belonging to a post-apocalyptic people? ”
Recently many writers, including Latine writers, have described themselves as part of “a postapocalyptic people.” Where did such Latine self-understandings come from? This book project examines how U.S. Latine literary and activist traditions engage biblical apocalyptic imaginaries to confront environmental catastrophe, colonial legacies, and epistemic violence. Drawing on Puerto Rican and ethnic Mexican cultural production, the project pairs biblical texts with Latine responses to ecological crisis, broadly understood. Rather than treating apocalypse as a future rupture, these thinkers depict it as a persistent condition rooted in conquest and extractive capitalism. Each chapter reads canonical and non-canonical “apocalyptic” traditions (such as Revelation, Mark 13, 1 Corinthians 15, the Apocryphon of John) alongside Latine literature and activism, tracing how apocalyptic motifs are reimagined to assert survivance, cultivate ancestral knowledge, and imagine decolonial transformation. The project contributes to biblical studies, Latine studies, and environmental humanities by reframing apocalypse as a site of meaning making and resistance. It bridges church and academy by engaging biblical texts through the lived experiences of historically marginalized communities who have already been responding to states of emergency. The intercontextual approach and thematic discussion is highly relevant to church contexts in a present shaped by feelings of crisis.