Navigating Interiorised Dissonance: Somali Women's Identity, Agency and The Language of Apparel in Nadifa Mohamed's The Orchard of Lost Souls

Nadifa Mohamed wrote The Orchard of Lost Souls with the impetus of foregrounding Somali women's intimate experiences throughout the social and political upheaval during the prelude to the Somaliland-Somalia civil war. The Somali people's centuries-cultivated homogeneity through culture and way of life has come under pressure by contending factions exacerbated by divisive clan-led violence and the resulting rebellion. This paper seeks to interrogate the interiorised ruminations of the novel's women caught in the ensuing chaos who grapple with conflicting issues of identity and agency. Somali women's obscured interiorised lives and their diverging narratives together with their articulations, including the non-verbalised language of apparel, frames the direction of my argument. Their dissonant women-centric perspectives and the enacted agencies of their stances contribute to my elucidation of navigating and contemplating Mohamed's unmoored women's writing.