The Ecology of Memory

Yvonne Vera’s The Stone Virgins has largely been analyzed through the frameworks of political, feminist, and trauma theory. While ecocritical readings remain limited, they tend to treat ecological elements as archival and representational backdrops for psychological damage and historical loss. This article intervenes in current ecocritical debates by shifting the focus from the landscape as a passive symbol to ecology as an active survival practice, demonstrating how state-sponsored violence dismantles the bodily practices required for ecological endurance. It argues that memory in this novel is not positioned primarily as testimony but as an ecological practice embedded in long-term engagement with the land and its surroundings. Viewing the text through the lens of Fikret Berkes’s Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) within localized, African-centered ecological epistemologies, the analysis establishes the concept of ecology as a practice-based knowledge system. The characters process disruption and ensure their survival through everyday interaction with their environments instead of through verbal articulation. In relation to this, trauma is understood as an event that is endured and negotiated through ongoing interaction with damaged ecological worlds. By connecting ecological knowledge, memory, and trauma, the article moves beyond speech-centered trauma models, showing how The Stone Virgins connects human survival to deep practical knowledge of the land.