Since 2017, Jonas Fischer and I have been exploring the implications of conveying ethnographic encounters with toxicity visually, and reflecting on what this might mean for the ethnographic method in return.
In 2024, our graphic novel, Toxic (University of Toronto Press) was published. Over the past decade, people have learned about oil contamination in the Ecuadorian Amazon through “Toxic Tours” in which a guide brings participants – students, lawyers, environmental activists, journalists, or foreign tourists – to visit contaminated sites. These toxic tours combine personal experience and local knowledge to convince visitors of the immediacy of environmental issues. Drawing on extensive research and fieldwork, Toxic takes the reader on a visual toxic tour through the Amazon. Following the story of three fictional participants, this graphic novel paints a visceral picture of the waste pits, gas flares, and precarious lives of people in this region. The book challenges the reader to consider what it means to live in a place and historical moment where those most burdened by industrial toxicants are continually required to prove that harm has occurred. In 2025, we published a German-language version with the JaJa Verlag.
Our work was recently covered in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. You can also check out our graphic essays in Strapazin, The NIB, Springs and other edited volumes linked below, as well as public lectures and newspaper coverage of our work in Ecuador.
Reviews of Toxic
Toxic is an emotionally rich, stylistically compelling ethnographic wonder. The graphic style reminds us of the ever-present certainty of oil pollution in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The compelling use of inks and lighting brings the ethnographic findings to the fore, and each section illustrates the complexities, joys, and tragedies of fighting extractivism.” – Ernesto Schwartz-Marin, University of Exeter
” Oil companies have long since moved on, but their legacy—countless pits full of toxic production waste—will continue to contaminate the flora and fauna of the Ecuadorian jungle for decades to come. Amelia Fiske’s many years of research and Jonas Fischer’s eerily beautiful images impressively portray this often-suppressed problem of oil production.” – Christoph Schuler, Editor of STRAPAZIN
” This graphic novel provides an accessible route into learning about environmental injustices in Ecuador in proximity to Texaco/Chevron oil industry productions. In the narrative, we follow Donald, a local resident who hosts “Toxic tours” through the Amazon, educating his community and visitors to his community on the history of the land and the way oil industry permeates the environment and way of life there. Amazingly, the characters and the Toxic Tours are based on ethnographic research that the authors did with real people and neighborhoods in Ecuador! I thought this was very important to know. Also, I find that using this medium is so clever for a topic as heavy as this. In plain black-and-white text a topic like this can feel unavoidably weighty, to the point where I suspect many potential readers are lost before any message can be delivered. Yet, in graphic form, there is already some levity built into the structure of the book. Though the topic isn’t any less sad or important, something about reading it through dialogue bubbles makes it easier for the heart to process. It is my hope that this book will reach a wider audience and that it will help the people and environments affected through this wider reach. I, myself, walk away from this read more educated and more interested in the intricacies of oil production and pollution. I walk away especially interested, as a person born in the US, of the impact my country’s technologies (and sometimes inhumane usage of those technologies) have on other nations and humans. This is a question that this book inspires me to keep pursuing.” – Karina, reader review on Amazon
Toxic is a graphic novel that exposes the problems caused by oil extraction in Lago Agrio region of the Amazon. The story gives a lot of information on how Texaco and other companies operated in the area without any concern about how they were harming the environment and the health of people living in the area. The text is easy to understand and engaging. The illustrations are amazing, and they show how oil is an ever-present problem clearly, with blots of black staining all the pages. The graphic novel is education without being boring. It’s certainly a great resource to inform people of the problems caused by oil extraction.” – Thalita, reader review on Amazon
amelia fiske 