A Rich Inheritance
An Ecocritical Reading of Ken Saro-Wiwa’s Short Stories and Poetry
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21722359 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Daisy Pullman (University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 27 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 303-316 |
| Publication date | 2023-07-03 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Green Letters (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1468-8417 • E-ISSN: 2168-1414 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14688417.2023.2272947 |
| OpenAlex | W4388268904 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 23 |
This article examines Ken Saro-Wiwa’s (1941–1995) vision for the Ogoni people through an ecocritical interrogation of his short fiction and poetry. Academic analyses of the Ogoni struggle have been unfailingly anthropocentric in their approaches. This article challenges this dominant epistemology by centring the non-human world. I examine Saro-Wiwa’s collection of short stories ‘A Forest of Flowers’, the poetry anthology ‘Songs in a Time of War’, and his final poems written in prison in the 1990s. An ecocritical reading of these texts will reveal how Saro-Wiwa invokes pastoral tropes and romantic portrayals of a pre-oil ecological paradise to articulate a primordial eco-nationalist Ogoni identity. Throughout his fiction, the fate of the people and the natural world are intertwined, and notions of home and community expand beyond the human to incorporate the ecosystem of the bioregion
Art · Biology · Linguistics · Literature · Poetry · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · History · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · South African History and Culture · Genetics
Haiti’s Elusive Paradise
Environmentalism and Postcolonialism
Postcolonial Ecocriticism
Toward an African Ecocriticism
The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism
Nature and environmentalism of the poor
Oil Boom, Oil Doom
Who Owns the Oil
Funerals and Belonging
The Making of the Ogoni Ethnic Group
Burials and Belonging in Nigeria
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |