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Lily Rose Tope (PhD) is a Professor at the Department of English and Comparative Literature, University of the Philippines, Diliman. She has a PhD from the National University of Singapore. She is the author of (Un)Framing Southeast Asia: Nationalism and the Post Colonial Text in English in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines and co-editor of An Anthology of English Writing from Southeast Asia. She has written various articles on Southeast Asian literature in English, Asian literature in translation, Philippine Chinese literature, and Philippine literature in English. She was also an issue editor for the Journal of Southeast Asian Ecocriticism. E-mail: lrtope@up.edu.ph

Abstract: Solastalgia is defined as “the distress caused by the transformation and degradation of one’s home environment” (Albrecht 45) and connects climate crisis to the mental, emotional, and spiritual responses of human inhabitants. As a concept related to place, it explains the ecological grief and eco-anxiety of a community that is susceptible to onslaughts of nature and yet remains in a beloved place, despite experiencing powerlessness due to nature and human institutions. Floods can take on the function of causal and natural shaper of place. They are a result of human excess and nature’s response and resistance to that excess. Based on selected flood narratives from the Philippines, solastalgia will be explored as an ambiguous relationship between floods and Filipino human communities. The study will examine how floods, a nonhuman but ubiquitous presence in Filipino life, can bring both distress and comfort, “a form of homesickness when one is still at ‘home’” (Albrecht 45). Albrecht, G. “Solastalgia.” A New Concept in Health and Identity. PAN Philos. Act. Nat. 2005, 3, 41.

Keywords: solastalgia, floods, flood narratives, place, eco-anxiety