Extinction Capital of the World
Stories
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Named a Best Book of 2025 by: Esquire * Electric Literature * Debutiful
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’ahu following 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rigg's promising debut collection focuses on the intertwined lives of Hawaiian characters navigating family turmoil and the impacts of imperialism. The excellent opener, "Target Island," concerns a geologist named Harrison who begins working for the U.S. Navy in the early 1990s to recover unexploded ordnance on the island of Kaho‘olawe, which the military had used as a testing site for decades. He'd protested the tests for years, in part because of injuries sustained in a 1948 blast by his parents, who were living in nearby Maui at the time. Harrison's son narrates "Field Dressing," set in the 2000s shortly after Harrison's death from cancer. In it, the son goes on a drunken fishing trip with his childhood friend, Max, and both men discuss their marital problems. A younger Max reappears in "After Ivan," as he and his twin brother, Mason, compete as kayakers in Cuba and Miami in 1989, hoping to qualify for the world championship in Poland. Rigg explores mortality with a mix of kitchen-sink realism—as when Harrison's drunk and grief-stricken son shoves his wife after his father's funeral—and stylistic flourishes such as the recurring marking of time ("Forty-one years before his granddaughter is born, Harrison sees his first picture of Kaho'olawe"). These sad but vivid stories radiate with intelligence.
