A Recommended Read from: Vulture * Oprah Daily * Our Culture * LitHub * Debutiful * LGBTQ Reads * Alta Journal * Autostraddle * BookRiot
Magnetic, haunting, and tender, Extinction Capital of the World is a stunning portrait of Hawai’i—and a powerful meditation on family, queer love, and community amid imperialism and environmental collapse.
In ten vibrant, affecting stories, Mariah Rigg immerses readers in contemporary Hawai’i. By turns heartbreaking and hopeful, these stories of love, longing, and grief are fierce dispatches from a state haunted by the specter of colonization, a precious biome under constant threat.
An older man grapples with the American-weapons research conducted on a neighboring island that reverberates through his entire life. A pregnant woman seeks belonging while poaching flowers in the rainforest with her partner’s mother. Two teenage girls find love during a summer spent on Midway Atoll. A young woman returns home to O’ahufollowing a breakup and reconnects with her estranged father and the island itself.
Linked by both place and character, Rigg’s stories illuminate the exotification and commodification of Hawai’i in the American mythos. Extinction Capital of the World is an environmental love letter to the Hawaiian Islands and an indelible portrayal of the people who inhabit them—marking the arrival of an exciting new voice in contemporary fiction.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Magnetic, haunting, and tender, Extinction Capital of the World is a stunning portrait of Hawai’i—and a powerful meditation on family, queer love, and community amid imperialism and environmental collapse.
In ten vibrant, affecting stories, Mariah Rigg immerses readers in contemporary Hawai’i. By turns heartbreaking and hopeful, these stories of love, longing, and grief are fierce dispatches from a state haunted by the specter of colonization, a precious biome under constant threat.
An older man grapples with the American-weapons research conducted on a neighboring island that reverberates through his entire life. A pregnant woman seeks belonging while poaching flowers in the rainforest with her partner’s mother. Two teenage girls find love during a summer spent on Midway Atoll. A young woman returns home to O’ahufollowing a breakup and reconnects with her estranged father and the island itself.
Linked by both place and character, Rigg’s stories illuminate the exotification and commodification of Hawai’i in the American mythos. Extinction Capital of the World is an environmental love letter to the Hawaiian Islands and an indelible portrayal of the people who inhabit them—marking the arrival of an exciting new voice in contemporary fiction.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Extinction Capital of the World is the queer ecological collection of my dreams. Liberated of the western constraint of linearity, these ten stories blissfully cast forward and loop back, attending to all the small and significant ways our choices reverberate across time, across landscapes, across species. Whether moving through the galleries of the Honolulu Museum of Art or navigating the open waters of Ka?iwi Channel, the characters of Rigg's world are as vibrant and diverse as the many species populating these pages. Extinction Capital of the World is incisive and deeply compassionate, and Rigg is an extraordinary storyteller." - Megan Kamalei Kakimoto
"In Extinction Capital of the World, Mariah Rigg traces the contours of contemporary Hawai'i with exquisite precision and grace. Across these ten stories, she shows how desire anchors us to vanishing landscapes, and how the heart finds its coordinates even as familiar worlds shift beneath our feet. These are breathtakingly beautiful dispatches from the frontlines of an imperiled ecosystem, rendered with astonishing clarity." - Kimberly King Parsons
"A heartbreaking collection of queer girlhood that carries the echo of generations, the failure and regrets of children and parents. It aches and aches and aches and then blossoms with the sweep of time, catastrophe, disaster, cruelty, death. Mariah Rigg's written a stunning debut. I love this book." - Casey Plett
"In Extinction Capital of the World, Mariah Rigg traces the contours of contemporary Hawai'i with exquisite precision and grace. Across these ten stories, she shows how desire anchors us to vanishing landscapes, and how the heart finds its coordinates even as familiar worlds shift beneath our feet. These are breathtakingly beautiful dispatches from the frontlines of an imperiled ecosystem, rendered with astonishing clarity." - Kimberly King Parsons
"A heartbreaking collection of queer girlhood that carries the echo of generations, the failure and regrets of children and parents. It aches and aches and aches and then blossoms with the sweep of time, catastrophe, disaster, cruelty, death. Mariah Rigg's written a stunning debut. I love this book." - Casey Plett
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