Resistance and Healing in a Postcolonial Lantancamara: Mala Ramchandin and the Decaying Garden Anonymous College

Mala Ramchandin is the main protagonist of the novel “Cereus Blooms at Night” written by Shani Mootoo in 1996. Themes of ecocriticism, transnational feminism, and the genre of minor literature, a theory popularized by philosophers and activists Deleuze and Guattari, are all visited in Mootoo’s novel. Mala Ramchandin and the individuals in her community of Lantancamara establish a dynamic with each other that disrupts the colonial modes of power. I will argue that through inter-generational displacement, subverting normative gender roles enforced through colonial subjugation, and the multi-layered subterranean trauma experienced by the Ramchandins within the house, the novel works towards politicizing and dismantling colonial forces through emphasizing the minor figure. The characters deterritorialize the colonial and familial space, which in turn sublimate colonial power into the citizens’ personal forms of resistance against cyclical colonial violence.

The great traumas endured by Mala and her survival of the events is a testament to the severity of the colonial violence inflicted upon the islanders. Mala’s father, Chandin Ramchandin was a victim of such colonial forces when he was stripped of his parentage and made to convert...