Childhood in Contemporary Diasporic African Literature

Beschreibung

This book examines the representation of figures, memories and images of childhood in selected contemporary diasporic African fiction by Adichie, Abani, Wainaina and Oyeyemi. The book argues that childhood is a key framework for thinking about contemporary African and African Diasporic identities. It argues that through the privileging of childhood memory, alternative conceptions of time emerge in this literature, and which allow African writers to re-imagine what family, ethnicity, nation means within the new spaces of diaspora that a majority of them occupy. The book therefore looks at the connections between childhood, space, time and memory, childhood gender and sexuality, childhoods in contexts of war, as well as migrant childhoods. These dimensions of childhood particularly relate to the return of the memory of Biafra, the figures of child soldiers, memories of growing up in Cold War Africa, queer boyhoods/sonhood as well as experiences of migration within Africa, North America and Europe.”.
This book examines the representation of figures, memories and images of childhood in selected contemporary diasporic African fiction by Adichie, Abani, Wainaina and Oyeyemi. The book argues that childhood is a key framework for thinking about contemporary African and African Diasporic identities. It argues that through the privileging of childhood memory, alternative conceptions of time emerge in this literature, and which allow African writers to re-imagine what family, ethnicity, nation means within the new spaces of diaspora that a majority of them occupy. The book therefore looks at the connections between childhood, space, time and memory, childhood gender and sexuality, childhoods in contexts of war, as well as migrant childhoods. These dimensions of childhood particularly relate to the return of the memory of Biafra, the figures of child soldiers, memories of growing up in Cold War Africa, queer boyhoods/sonhood as well as experiences of migration within Africa, North America and Europe. 
Takes an original approach by analysing the use of the idea of childhood by contemporary writers Opens up the textual archive of African literature Examines a range of widely-read and studied African novels

Autor*in

Christopher E. W. Ouma

Themen in »Childhood in Contemporary Diasporic African Literature«

Heinemann African Writers James Currey Canon Ngugi wa Thiong’o Structural Adjustment Programs Cold War AIDS Chinua Achebe Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Stimmen zu »Childhood in Contemporary Diasporic African Literature«

“The book’s arguments are lucidly presented and clearly demonstrated in the literary analyses across the chapters.” (Daniel Chukwuemeka, The Black Scholar, Vol. 51 (4), 2021)

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