Abstract
Lynton Burger’s She Down There (2020) invites us to think with sea creatures, the oceans, and spiritual beings. The author draws on the mythical water goddess Sedna and diverse sea creatures to blur the lines between the human and the non-human, the natural and the supernatural, the land and the ocean, the past and the present, the rational and otherwise. The multi-species entanglements create the inspirited waters of She Down There. I argue that the creolized waters of She Down There provide a global approach to reading for water in Southern African literature. I further explore the ways in which the novel extend our understanding of amphibian aesthetics as the blended myths mirror intermingling elements of land and water. In this chapter, I show how She Down There draws on water-based indigenous beliefs to represent complex oceanic heritages.
This chapter is part of my PhD thesis titled ‘Of Water and Water Spirits in Southern African Literature’. I extend my gratitude to the Andrew. W Mellon Trust Foundation for the grant that made the research possible.
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Joseph, C. (2022). Multi-Spirited Waters in Lynton Burger’s She Down There. In: Boswell, R., O’Kane, D., Hills, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Blue Heritage. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99347-4_10
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