From Trans-Species Vulnerability to Social-Ecological Resilience: Aminatta Forna’s Happiness (2018)

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.28914/Atlantis-2025-47.1.8

Keywords:

vulnerability, social-ecological resilience, Aminatta Forna, ecocriticism , trans- speciesism , ethics of care

Abstract

Aminatta Forna’s Happiness (2018) presents contemporary London both as a site of trans-species vulnerability and as a social-ecological system defined by its capacity for resilience, adaptability and transformability. Drawing on Judith Butler’s reconceptualization of vulnerability as resistance (2016), and on the ecofeminist extension of the ethics of care to non-human others, my analysis explores Forna’s cast of resilient characters who are transiting the postcolonial metropolis and are affected by various expressions of what Rob Nixon calls “slow violence” (2011).  Additionally, by adopting the critical framework of resilience thinking and assuming its capacity to create decolonial narratives of survival and healing, I contend that it is possible to interrogate the boundaries that characterize the Anthropocene—between nature and culture, humans and non-humans, global and local, development and conservation—and accept Forna’s proposal to move beyond these dichotomies so as to embrace the importance of shared materialities, affects and ecosystems.

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Author Biography

Carolina Sánchez-Palencia, Universidad de Sevilla

Carolina Sánchez-Palencia is a Professor of English Studies and Chair of the Department of English and American Literature at the University of Seville (Spain). Her interests are focused on Gender and Postcolonial Studies where she explores the representations of trauma, vulnerability, precariousness, hope and resilience as embodied by non-normative subjects and subaltern communities. She has published extensively on Modernist and Postmodernist authors and more recently she has written articles and chapters on Black and Asian British fiction (by Andrea Levy, Caryl Phillips, Bernardine Evaristo, Jackie Kay, Aminatta Forna and Kamila Shamsie). Her work has been published in high impact journals like Journal of Postcolonial Writing, European Journal of Women’s Studies, CLC Web: Comparative Literature and Culture, Atlantis, Humanities, or International Journal of English Studies.

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Published

2025-06-25

How to Cite

Sánchez-Palencia, C. (2025). From Trans-Species Vulnerability to Social-Ecological Resilience: Aminatta Forna’s Happiness (2018). Atlantis. Journal of the Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies, 47(1), 131–149. https://doi.org/10.28914/Atlantis-2025-47.1.8

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