From Landscape to Life: An Ecopolitical Reading of Sarah Joseph’s Gift in Green.

Abstract

The accelerating environmental crisis has compelled scholars to rethink the relationship between literature, ecology, and politics. While postcolonial Indian literature traditionally emphasized religion, region, and race, it often overlooked the environment as a site of cultural and existential concern. In the twenty-first century, however, the threats posed by anthropocentrism, modernity, and exploitative development have pushed writers to foreground ecological degradation and the urgency of preservation. Ecocriticism and ecofeminism, developed in the 1960s, first advanced eco-conscious readings of literature, but ecopolitics extends these frameworks by interrogating the role of governance and institutional power in shaping environmental crises. Although unable to fully dismantle entrenched anthropocentric paradigms, ecopolitics draws upon radical ecology, ecocriticism, and ecofeminism to articulate a more comprehensive critique. This paper examines Sarah Joseph’s Gift in Green through an ecopolitical lens, employing close textual analysis to reveal how the novel critiques ecological exploitation while envisioning possibilities for sustainable coexistence.