Re-memory and an African ecofeminist poetic of healing in Malika Ndlovu's poetry.

This essay uses African ecofeminism as a lens for analyzing healing elements in the poetry of Malika Ndlovu. It argues that in using nature as a site for “re-memorying” an alternative African history and culture in the anthology born in africa but (2000), Ndlovu constructs an African ecofeminist poetic, aimed at healing the contemporary psychic wounds of colonization and apartheid. Drawing on Toni Morrison's and Pumla Dineo Gqola's formulations of “re-memory” – the way subjugated peoples reconstruct histories which have been destroyed by oppressive practices such as colonialism – I argue that Ndlovu's poetry uses nature as a generative site for “re-memorying” erased, pre-colonial African histories, as a way of healing trauma, and a method for countering the shame of miscegenation inscribed within “coloured” identity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]