ABSTRACT
Malika Ndlovu's various creative endeavors testify to her commitment to healing. While her commitment to healing through art is well known, Ndlovu's poetry is not widely acknowledged, and Barbara Boswell is the only commentator to take note of the relationship between her work and environmental themes. This chapter discerns a powerful connection between Ndlovu's writing and ecofeminism, and demonstrates that this link is most clearly expressed in the healing agenda of her work. First, though, it is necessary to examine how ecofeminism, as a complex body of scholarly thought, conceptualizes healing. Armbruster mentions four criteria for ecofeminist literary theory and criticism to keep in view when choosing texts to explore. Ndlovu has written several other poems that draw on mythical, apparently essentialist visions of nature and/or womanhood in the service of healing. In "Born in Africa But", she explores a specific form of oppression associated with "coloured" South African identity.
