Black Ecologies of Zone A

In Black Ecologies of Zone A, Ayasha Guerin examines how the intertwined forces of colonialism, racial capitalism, and environmental transformation produced New York City’s coastal flood zones. Seen through the lens of Black ecologies, flooding is not a natural disaster, but a condition deliberately imposed through historical processes of landmaking, labor exploitation, and ecological disruption. Drawing on a range of resources like environmental and labor histories, law, archaeology, and memoir, they trace how centuries of settlement transformed wetlands, waterways, and shorelines into sites of extraction, enclosure, and vulnerability. However, Guerin also highlights waterfront spaces as sites of fugitivity, mutual aid, and abolitionist organizing where Black and Indigenous communities forge alternative relations of care and survival. Engaging contemporary artists alongside historical archives, Guerin foregrounds creative practice as a method for interpreting and reimagining socio-ecological histories, calling for relational repair grounded in ecological remediation, decolonization, and interspecies care.