Degenerate ark

Degenerate ark is an essay written for Issue 39 of the Avery Review. Its subject is Gorda Cay, a thousand-acre island in The Bahamas with a history of narcotics trafficking, now the location of The Walt Disney Corporation’s private resort ‘Castaway Cay’, which one can only access via a ticket aboard a Disney Cruise Line vessel. The essay considers the closed loop between Disney’s resorts, cruise ships, and island before speculating on the complicity between corporation and guest in the erasure of inconvenient histories.

It won first-prize in the annual Avery Review Essay Prize in 2019. Read it here.