“From Soil to Asphalt: Ecofeminist Displacement and Identity in Silver Sister"

Lillian Ng’s Silver Sister offers a corrosive exploration of how environmental degradation and forced displacement fracture personal and national identity through an ecofeminist lens. This paper examines how the protagonist’s interdependent relationship with the land, initially a source of cultural rootedness, is systematically dismantled by industrialization and rapid development , reflecting the dual oppression of women and nature under patriarchal and neo-colonial systems. Drawing on ecofeminist theorists such as Vandana Shiva and Val Plumwood, this study argues that Ng’s novel critiques nationalist narratives that prioritize economic progress over ecological and human well-being, rendering marginalized communities, particularly women , expendable and ignored. As the protagonist migrates from rural to urban spaces and to different countries, her identity succumbs alongside the torn landscapes, embodying Rob Nixon’s concept of "slow violence," where environmental and cultural losses gather up invisibly yet destructively. The paper further analyzes how Ng’s portrayal of displacement challenges monolithic notions of national identity. Forced to adapt to alien urban environments, the protagonist’s struggle represents the broader disconnect between state-imposed nationalism and the lived realities of displaced peoples such as Silver who struggles with language and landscape changes which make her feel even more alienated. Her acts of resilience and survival through all these difficulties become subtle acts of ecofeminist resistance, reclaiming agency through connecting with the natural world. These moments expose the contradictions of postcolonial nationalism, which often replicates colonial patterns of ecological exploitation while silencing women’s voices.