“This is my Place, Mama Nadi´s”: Feminine Spaces and Identity in Lynn Nottage´s "Ruined"

Abstract

Lynn Nottage’s Ruined (2009) takes place at Mama Nadi’s, a brothel in the Democratic Republic of Congo during the civil war. Female identities, both physical and psychical, are constantly threatened (about to crumble, about to be “in ruins”) by a masculine world of war and violence. The brothel as a business setting becomes a quasi-domestic setting and a sanctuary where identities can be, however feebly, defined and preserved within the unstable walls of feminine solidarity. The use and exploitation of the corporeal female space by clients of the brothel are described in spatial terms that replicate the exploitation of the rich mineral land in Congo. Ultimately, Ruined reminds us that the borders of one’s space, both in the physical world and when pertaining to one’s identity, are constantly subject to transgression, invasion, and ruin.