ABSTRACT
Melissa Lucashenko's Too Much Lip constructs social justice cosmologically by evoking an ecosystem that continuously acts sympathetically to human flourishing. Water, land, animals and family members (dead and alive) become co-actants in the quest to regain land- and water-rights and to reconcile the Salter family. This chapter pays particular attention to the magnetic pull of the river and its ability to ‘move’ protagonists and bring the Salter family back together. Rather than a traditionally fixed connection to Country, the Salters’ relationship to their river is portrayed to arise out of modern experiences of dispossession, displacement and ostracism, which mobilise various forms of action. This movement between tradition and modernity, as well as between the city and country, is what determines the protagonist's ‘eco-cosmopolitanism,’ which conveys that a highly efficient custodianship today often involves caring for multiple places and communities. In fact, the novel suggests that it is the very mobility of characters that is the key to winning custodianship. This mobility is mirrored through the river and its more-than-human inhabitants, which are presented as more than metaphorical.
