Solastalgia and Poetic Resilience in the Environmental Imagination of Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner

Abstract

Indigenous communities across the world and, more specifically, those of the Global South, are especially vulnerable to the effects of human-induced climate change. Standing at the crossroads of modernity and ancestral life, many communities face overwhelming losses of biocultural traditions along with their rightful homelands. Such loss has led to anxiety among communities firmly rooted in particular places. As a form of resistance to pervasive capitalist forces benefiting from the degradation of the environment, climate poetry offers an alternative response for voicing concerns in the form of protesting ecological abuses while allaying the anxiety of solastalgic disruption (McDougall et al., 2022, pp. 26–27). This article examines the poetic imagination of Marshall Islands writer and activist Kathy Jetn̄il-Kijiner by linking her work to the concepts of solastalgia and resilience. Representative of current Indigenous concerns over climate change and biocultural loss, Jetn̄il-Kijiner’s poetry presents a powerful voice from a postcolonial nation located in the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and the Philippines. Her poetry exudes a sense of solastalgia in response to the ecologically destructive influence of powerful Western nations, in general, and the United States, in particular, on the Marshall Islands. Narrativizing the concept of solastalgia, Jetn̄il-Kijiner’s poetry critiques human-driven ecological ruination and voices concern about the impacts of climate change on island nations. Her work, furthermore, underscores that postcolonial states, such as the Marshall Islands, must negotiate conflicting relationships with the forces of modernity that underlie ecologically detrimental choices and behaviors. The article thus aims to extend the concept of solastalgia to Indigenous communities through an analysis of Jetn̄il-Kijiner’s work.